China Bars Sales of Chris Berman's Novel, The Hive

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 23, 2009 --

In a move to stem continued negative commentary on human rights violations by the Peoples Republic of China, a new science fiction Novel titled, The Hive, by author Chris Berman, joins such notables as actress Sharon Stone, singer Bojork and Richard Gere as persona non-grata in Communist China. Following demonstrations by those opposed to China's annexation of Tibet and negative public comments by singer Bojork and actress Sharon Stone, China has begun to take a much harder look at all forms of entertainment coming into the country from the West for politically incorrect content. The latest victim of Chinese scrutiny is a new science fiction novel titled, The Hive, by Chris Berman. Chinese censors found references in the novel about an alien invasion in the near future, concerning Chinese violations of arms treaties and a military space program unaccectable. The Chinese Ministry of Culture informed Mr. Berman's publisher that unless these references were removed from the novel, China would halt any importation of the book and seek to remove and destroy any copies already in the PRC. Mr. Berman, the Author of The Hive, had this reaction.

"It is regretable to me that a nation the size of China feels so terribly threatened by a work of fiction. This tells me that many of my conjectures in the book about China's secret plans for military domination of space, continuing development of biological warfare weapons and the building of super hardened missile silos for a new generation of accurate ICBMs aimed at America and the West must have struck a nerve."

Mr. Berman further responded, "I call things as I see them. Ronand Reagan was on the money with his "evil empire" comments about the old Soviet Union. China has taken on this mantle of the former USSR as the worst human rights abuser on the planet. I also feel we in the West are paying for the ropes that China will hang us with by buying up their products. This vast imbalance of trade is going right into their military. If China is committed to peace through trade and economic growth, why are they going all out to develop space based weapons and why are they building as many of their new Type -094 ballistic missile submarines as they can possibly produce? These nuclear submarines carry up to 20 long range ICBMs with six warheads each, in the one-megton range. As far as I'm concenred these actions are not those of a friendly trading partner."

With this impass, it looks like this intersting new science fiction novel will not be gracing the shelves in Chinese bookstores any time soon.

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