Tom Clancy FAQ - Ryanverse

The "Ryanverse" is a collective term which deals with the books centered around the character of John Patrick "Jack" Ryan.  In the first book chronologically in the series, Without Remorse, Jack Ryan is a child whose father is a policeman "tracking" John Kelly.  In Patriot Games, the next book chronologically, Jack Ryan becomes the central character and is an adult.  The Bear and the Dragon is culmination, to this point, of Ryan's life as he is now President of the United States.   Rainbow Six remains in the Ryanverse as it is a book centered on John Clark and Ding Chavez, two major characters in the latter Ryanverse books.  The Red Rabbit will reportedly fall between Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October.

Contents

• Order of Ryanverse Books  
• Character Listing  
• Timeline  
• Book Summaries  
• Concordance

Order of Ryanverse Books

The last novel was published in August of 2003.  Clancy moved up his usual "every other year for a new book" schedule for The Teeth of the Tiger.  He also tells us this, along with Red Rabbit, are the last two Ryanverse novels. 

The storyline order of the movies is substantially different from both of the above. See the Movies Section of this FAQ.  The Sum of All Fears movie threw that storyline in the trash...

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Character Listing

A comprehensive character listing for the Ryanverse books has been developed with help from a number of people.  This listing is complete only through SoAF.  DOH, EO, R6, and TBatD will be compiled next. 

Character Listing  

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Timeline

Tim Klevar has developed a timeline for the Ryanverse through EO. It is based on hard dates which appear in Without Remorse. WR+0 is November, 1969, just after Hurricane Camille. In May, 1970, Kelly meets Pam and the Rosens. On June 18, 1970, Pam dies and Kelly is shot in the back. In August, 1970, Kelly makes the trip to New Orleans and Eglin AFB. Based on this data, the timeline is then as follows.  

Note that this is a "best guess" but is close. PLEASE don't email me and tell me it is wrong.  We know it is.  This is fiction we're dealing with!

Update: This has generated almost as much traffic as the "which person do you like for THIS character in the movie ______" threads. Couple of things. This timeline was a by-product of researching things for creating the FAQ, specifically character sketches and plot lines. Clancy notes that "time is flexible in the Ryanverse" in this note. For the folks out there, remember...the books are written in real-time, and it probably helps the "filler" to make reference to some real event. Alas, the books themselves are fiction, and time is manipulated to put the book's point across (and not incidentally, make a ton of money), not to adhere to....reality.

That's about as simple as it gets.  The following was submitted by another reader and presents some additional review of the timeline. 

To whom it may concern, 

I enjoyed reading through your timeline in "Ryanverse". However, there are a couple of discrepancies that I would like to point out to you. They are as follows: 

1. In Without Remorse, John Terrance Kelly joined the CIA and became John Clark. This is well known, of course, but there is something else. We can be conservative and say this happened in 1970, which it probably did. Now, it is mentioned a few times in WR that Kelly is 26. However, in Rainbow Six, it is mentioned that Clark is in his "middle fifties", as well as having been in the CIA for "more than 30 years". This would suggest that Rainbow Six takes place towards the end of the '90s, or even the year 2000. 

2. One other point that strengthens the 2000 time line is the Summer Olympics that take place in Rainbow Six. These games are held in Sydney, Australia, which everybody knows actually happens in the year 2000. 

3. Now, here is an interesting point that supports Rainbow Six happening AFTER 2000. The Gulf War and even President Bush are mentioned a few times in a couple of the books. Now, the President before Fowler, who is not named, had to have taken office after 1992. He served a full term, as mentioned in SoAF when Fowler was elected because the incumbent "threw the election". So, in 1996, Fowler was elected. Now, he was close to the second half of his term when he resigned, making Durling President at the same time the Jack resigned as well. And Jack was gone for not quite 2 years, because the end of DoH was about 9 months away from the next Presidential election, which occurs in 2000! He is summarily elected then, and serves about 18 months when Rainbow Six takes place. This would put Rainbow Six around summer 2001, which doesn't support my theory about 2000 that well, but it does support my theory that all of this happened around the latter part of the 90's and early part of the new century. 

Sincerely, 

Jeff Cottingham, USN Pearl Harbor, HI

This is a good example of the irreconcilable differences in the time line that even Clancy has spoken about.

Finally, Bill Alessio wrote up a comprehensive chapter listing and put in significant dates and notes with respect to building a timeline.  It is found here.

Well, not finally.  Robert Miller (scrapper6@earthlink.net) provided another.  It is found here.  This is far and away the most detailed and researched chronology I have ever seen (thanks Robert).  We'll clean up the formatting as we go along.

Book Summaries

Plot/book summaries for each of the Ryanverse books is found here: Book Summaries. 

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Concordance

The Concordance provides reference material for all of the Ryanverse books as well as Red Storm Rising. 

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