On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 01:21:02PM +0100, Frank Elson wrote:
>
> Tom Clancy, universally acclaimed for getting his facts right, had someone
> driving a 'Land Rover Jeep'...
>
I think I see a pattern. I've found a couple of cases where Clancy is
a little shaky on his automotive facts.
- In the one about the drug-cartels, he describes the Columbian
dealers using "large, fast BMW M3's". The M3's are fast, but not
something I would call big. Relative to a Toyota Corolla, yes, but If
I were running a drug cartel, I'd consider M5's big and fast and use
them for my henchmen (and keep one for myself :-)). The M3's were not
a sub-compact, but certainly not "large".
- In the one about the Irish terrorists, Jack Ryan's wife and daughter
drive head-on into a barrier with her Porsche 911. He describes steam
coming from the engine bay. (of a rear-engined, air-cooled car, that
drives head-on into a divider?).
- The Land Rover Jeep thing Frank mentions only adds to my impression
he doesn't know or care much about his car research.
- Not an automotive case, but in Rainbow Six, he didn't realize how
cellular phone networks are connected and configured. He had one of
the characters driving out to each of the cell-sites with a floppy
disk to disable the phones for the bad-guys. (Since I've been writing
and troubleshooting/supporting GSM base-station software for the past
11 years (actually, my team does now) I see this as an error.
There could be alternate explanations for these discrepancies. After
all, it is fiction.
Rgds,
Vel
'65 SWB SW
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