November 2018 Group Read spoiler thread: The Hunt for Red October

[Nancy, Co-Moderator]

Spoiler thread for The Hunt for Red October for those of you who can't wait to share something about the book.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

I will be interested to see what all of you think of this novel.

[Ellington]

One pretty interesting thing is how the "logger transporters" factored into the end of the book so interestingly--it was set up and touched upon just enough that you remembered it when it finally factored in to the main plot.

[M.L.]

I loved the technical detail. The scenes in the sub, the nuclear melt down, great stuff.

[Kevin]

OK, I finished the book and had a bunch of criticisms along the way (see posts in main thread). Then I went and watched the movie for the first time ever. The screenwriters and I had many of the same thoughts -- there's a good story in there, but we need to drag it out from around the excessive detail and long, boring narrative that Clancy put into the book. It worked much better, and in particular:

1. we really didn't need the long exposition in the beginning about Captain Ramius's motivations for wanting to defect. Those slow first 50 pages were completely removed from the movie and it didn't matter. Get to the action, particularly when the back-story never becomes important later. In the end, Ramius's motivation to avoid allowing the Red October to be used to start WWIII was enough, along with the generally good idea of defecting.

2. There's no need for all the espionage - spies and double-agents, etc. The base plot has plenty of political intrigue.

3. simplify the players by making it ONE US sub (The Dallas) and ONE Soviet sub hunting for the Red October, and put Jack Ryan on the Dallas where he can be inside the action, and then transfer him to the Red October same as in the book.

4. Maintain the central point that we need to make the Russians think that the Red October has been sunk in order to be able to keep the ship. Plus add the twist at the end that the Russians lost the other sub, so they kind of know that the Red October was not sunk, but they can't admit to it.

5. Keep the fake reactor malfunction as the ploy for getting the crew to voluntarily abandon the ship -- but do it quickly and simply and without the 100 page dissertation on nuclear reactor design and operation and without the earlier melt-down on the other sub, which was totally unnecessary even in the book.

6. Make the climax the battle BEFORE the US takes possession of the Red October. I was a little disappointed that they left out the ramming (vs. torpedo) sequence, but that's just a quibble. the main point is that after the US gets the crew off the sub and fakes it's sinking and gets it into US waters -- the story is over. wrap it up! Don't spend another 100 pages setting up the second climax.

My advice to future readers is the same -- see the movie. I very seldom say that, since normally books are much better than their movie versions, but in this case, skip the read and see the show.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

Yep, I didn't have a problem with the movie's changes, because their motivation was always in the name of making a more coherent movie.