For the Bolshevik October Revolution, see October Revolution. For the tractor factory in Stalingrad, see Battle of Stalingrad.

The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy's first novel, appeared in 1984. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius, and a CIA analyst named Jack Ryan.

The novel is sometimes referred to as the first real example of the techno-thriller, a hybrid between the spy thriller and science fiction in which attention to technical and operational detail about military and intelligence activities is paramount.

Many of the characters in the novel appear throughout Clancy's subsequent works, particularly Ryan, who is the central character of many of Clancy's novels.

The novel was made into a commercially-successful movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099810/) in 1990, starring Sean Connery as Ramius and Alec Baldwin as Ryan, and featuring James Earl Jones, Sam Neill, Peter Firth, Courtney B. Vance, and Stellan Skarsgård.

The novel also served as the basis for a computer game, as well as a board game.

In January of 2005, Russian naval officials anouced that the real Red October would be decomissioned and scrapped as part of an ongoing effort to rebuild the Russian Navy [1] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1548&ncid=1548&e=6&u=/afp/20050119/lf_afp/afplifestylerussiasub).

Plot synopsis

Ramius intends to defect to the United States with his officers and the experimental submarine Red October which is equipped with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system making it extremely difficult to detect with regular methods. Cold war tensions are rising, because of fleet maneuvers and the dangers of a rogue submarine equipped with nuclear weapons. Ryan figures out what the submarine is up to, and through a combination of circumstances becomes responsible for seeing the sub to safety from the pursuing Soviet naval fleet.

See also

• Crazy Ivan