Red October (fictional submarine) the "Red October" adventure proved useful to Ryan's career. In later books, Ryan is able to use his heroism in obtaining the submarine as a lever with which to force a threatening KGB Secretary to defect to the U.S. against his will (in the novel "The Cardinal of the Kremlin"), ending the possibility of a Kremlin coup against a politically centrist Soviet government. Years later the truth of these events comes to light when political opponents of then-President Jack Ryan reveals his part in the affair. By this time in the early 1990s, the Soviet Union has collapsed and the
The Hunt for Red October sales qualifying the bestseller lists from mass market paperback back to hardcover, a trend that other “brand-name” authors such as Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Michael Crichton, and Danielle Steel would later follow. On April 20, 2018, "The Hunt for Red October" was included in the list of 100 most-loved books in the U.S., compiled by PBS as part of their new series and multi-platform initiative "The Great American Read". The book appeared in a fake commercial ad serving as a teaser trailer for the third season of the Netflix web television series "Stranger Things", which was released on July 16,