Tom Clancy provided the imagination for a generation of video games

Famous author Tom Clancy, who died yesterday at age 66, was pretty rude to me during my one and only interview with him. Back in 1996, when I was at The Wall Street Journal and he was starting his first video game company, Red Storm Entertainment, I asked if he had run out of bad guys since the Cold War had ended.

He became famous with The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising in the 1980s. It was a logical question to ask since the Soviets were no longer the enemies of the day. As I remember, Clancy shot back, “I’ve written five novels since the Berlin Wall came down. You figure it out.” His PR folks later told me they decided not to put Clancy in front of any more reporters after that interview.