The Hunt for Red October Clancy's writing style, which included technical details about weaponry, submarines, espionage, and the military. The accurate nature of Clancy's writing was well known among the American military that Clancy remarked in a 1986 interview: “When I met Navy Secretary John Lehman last year, the first thing he asked me about the book was, ‘Who the hell cleared it?’” The novel shares elements with James Clavell’s works, particularly "Shōgun" (1975) and "Noble House" (1981), where political power is used instead of physical confrontation with an enemy. Clancy portrays the Soviets as evil, comparing and contrasting their philosophies, morals, and values from
The Hunt for Red October (film) test of time". In contrast, "Newsweek"s David Ansen wrote, "But it's at the gut level that "Red October" disappoints. This smoother, impressively mounted machine is curiously ungripping. Like an overfilled kettle, it takes far too long to come to a boil". Vincent Canby, writing for "The New York Times", opined that "the characters, like the lethal hardware, are simply functions of the plot, which in this case seems to be a lot more complex than it really is". "The Hunt for Red October" was nominated and won several awards in 1991. In addition, the film was also nominated for AFI's