The Hive by Chris Berman

The Hive by Chris Berman

Tell us what motivated you to write this book.
I always wanted to write a book but I never had time to do it or even thought I could write an entire novel. Also I thought it would be like being at the bottom of a mountain and looking up, thinking how am I ever going to get to the top? Back last summer, I was recovering from being hit by a car. I had some fractured vertebrae and it was difficult to sleep. I'd wake up about 1:30 AM and sit up until about 3 or 4 in the morning watching old movies, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Explorer.

Two programs kind of stuck in my thoughts. One was about the Siafu, large and very aggressive African Army Ants with a highly developed collective intelligence and ruthless behavior. They colonize an area, eliminate any competing species and then denude the area of every living thing. Once a colony is established, a new queen sets out with her army to invade and secure a new target area. They showed the pattern of colonization from a single point and it expanded in a funnel shape and I remembered where I saw this before. It was in Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos. It was the hypothetical map of how an advanced technological species would travel from star to star, establishing colonies on planets. I thought, wow, what if something like the hive mind of an insect species evolved into a technological species. There used to be giant insects on the Earth 300 million years ago. Seven foot centipedes, three foot wide spiders, etc., so I suppose it’s possible.

The second show was about the Tunguska event. In 1908 something entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Northern Siberia and exploded about three miles up with the force of a 15 megaton bomb. It didn't leave a crater like a meteor but, instead blasted and flash burned the forest below for miles in the classic butterfly pattern of a nuclear detonation.

So, I though, what if this was some kind of nuclear powered spacecraft that was sent to locate habitable planets and it had some sort of self-destruct mechanism to erase any trace of the visit. Suppose this sent a message to a hive mind like the Siafu. That is how I came up with the plot for The Hive. I wanted it to be a fun read, good science fiction and have some romance and adventure in it. Because I was sitting up at night, I started writing sometimes three pages, sometimes ten or twelve a night and before I knew it, I had 400 pages and a complete novel. I guess you could call me an "Accidental Author."



Who did you write this book for?
I wrote this for fans of hard science fiction. I'm a big fan of these kinds of books. I love alien invasion stories, space battles, aircraft dog fights and a good romance rolled into a book. I don't think I'm alone in this so my audience is people like me. We're kind of like big kids who love seeing things get blown up, rescuing beautiful women from terrifying aliens, that sort of thing. This is not deep thought or high brow literature; this is entertainment, like a Seven Segal movie. I wrote this for people who like this kind of genre.



Bring your 3 main characters to life. Tell us who they are and what you love about them.
The Hive really has two main characters and quite a few secondary but important characters that keep popping up, some of them right until the end of the book. There is Colin Hewette, an American aerospace engineer. He’s a man’s man. A very intelligent and talented scientist but also a motorcycle enthusiast, he’s into marshal arts, tall and good looking with quite a few attractive ladies at his call.

However, he has a deep scar. His fiancée died in a senseless auto accident six years earlier. He blames himself because she wanted so much for him to take a drive down to San Diego at Christmas and instead he chose to stay up at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to work on a problem with the design of a space probe. Colin is the first to realize that the mysterious alien device that is discovered and just the tip of the iceberg. The device is sending information to an advancing fleet of alien warships. Instead of getting discourage and wringing his hands, he comes up with a bold plan to resurrect shelved technologies using nuclear propulsion to begin to develop a credible defense of the Earth. He never gives up.

Marina Asamova is a Russian/ Ukrainian radio astronomer working on the SETI program to search for extra terrestrial radio signals. She is a strikingly beautiful woman. Very intelligent but reserved, almost shy and very sensitive. She lost her own fiancée five years earlier in a training accident when he was flying a modified aircraft at the cosmonaut training center at Star City in Russia . She is very insightful and I drew her character from that of my wife, so how could I not love her? Needless to say, when fate and invading aliens bring these two together, sparks fly and romance blooms.

Other important characters are Misha Rodchenko, the very independent and rebellious computer genius from Ukraine who works to solve the mystery of the alien probe. There is Thomas Sanders, the heroic African American astronaut who is now the director of NASA. There is Karen Gleason, the female military pilot who flies the first nuclear powered spacecraft out to the alien artifact and many others, including a retired Israeli Air Force pilot who is a key character in the final showdown between humans and The Hive.



Where are you from? What is your favorite book, music, movie, play?
I was born just outside of New York City on Long Island . I lived in Connecticut for a time before relocating to Florida for my job. Like half the population of Florida , I’m from somewhere else.
I have quite a few favorite books. I like alternate history by writers like Leo Frankowski and Harry Turtledove. I think two of my favorite science fiction novels are, Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan and Millennium, by Ben Bova. I'd also have to add Enemy Mine, by Barry Longyear.

My favorite films? White Nights with Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Doctor Zhavago, Highlander (“I'm Connor McLeod of the Clan McLeod and I am immortal!”) Star Trek, The Voyage Home and 2010 (not 2001, too esoteric). For music, I'm a big 80s fan. I like Duran, Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Flock of Seagulls, etc. I love Jimi Hendrix, Clapton, BB King, The Allman Brothers and I love Russian pop and rock music. It’s different but very cool. As for plays, I'm pretty big on Shakespeare, like Macbeth, King Leer, Romeo and Juliet, etc. I'm really into ballet, classical ballet companies like ABT, the Kirov , Bolshoi, etc.



How do you spend your free time? Do you write poetry or sing?
Most of my free time is spent with my family. With my wife, Lareesa and our daughters Marina and Sabrina. Sabrina is just starting kindergarten this year, so lots of play time. She’s turning into an excellent reader. I don't sing for fear of being arrested for murdering someone’s ear drums. I do write poetry but only for my wife. My daughter Marina is excellent at writing poetry. She has such a gift for the English language and she spent the first 10 years of her life speaking Russian. I can't write as descriptively as she can.



How did you feel when you saw your book on the shelf for the first time?
I don’t know yet as it will be released in January but I’m sure it will have a certain feel of unreality to it like where did that come from? Did I write that?


What is your process for creating a novel? Do you plot out the story or do the characters speak to you?
I have the basic idea in my head and I start by setting the scene with some background information and third person narrative. Then my characters are put into place and begin to grow and develop. Sometimes I go back and expand on something in my character’s development but I try not to give the reader all the information at once. I try to spread the character development over quite a few chapters so you learn more about the person as you go along.



Could you imagine your life without writing today?
Not really, it becomes something you get hooked on. Almost like and addiction. You suddenly get a new character or a story idea in your head and you feel that if you don’t write it down, your head will explode. It’s a wonderful addiction however, sometimes my wife will ask me where am I because I'll get this distracted look, and I have to answer Oh, I'm on the Moon or in Earth orbit or maybe in the Gobi Desert. That’s the sort of thing that happens once you get bitten by the writing bug.



Do you feel writing is for those trained to write or for anyone who has a story to tell?
I think anyone who has a story to tell should tell it. I believe that writing is a talent and either you have this or you don't. You can train and take literature and English courses and you may be polished and you may have all the grammar right but the text has no soul to it. Take a famous impressionist artist like Henri Rousseau. His paintings like The Dream, are just amazing and powerful, yet, he had no training at all as an artist. One of my favorite science fiction authors is James P. Hogan. He was a commercial marketing rep for a computer company and he wrote his first novel because of a bet with his friend. It was excellent and from there he went on to have a career as a writer. Tom Clancy was an insurance agent when he wrote The Hunt for Red October. He had no formal training as a writer and now just about everyone knows who he is. Several of his novels have been made into movies. If you have a story to tell, tell it.



What is the best thing about being a published author?
I guess you could call me an in process of being published author. But, already, I'm entering a new world that I was unaware of. I have been asked to speak at the North Florida Writers meeting coming up in February on how I wrote my first novel in seven and a half weeks and how I found a publisher in two months after completing the book. It’s very exciting to find that people are really interested in what you are doing and want to know about it.


As a writer, what are some of the most important things you try to convey to readers through your books?
I guess I want to impart some of my own values into my writing. That humanity holds a special place in God’s universe. That we are basically all the same people that share a common origin. I try to show hope for the future and I believe we can become a far richer and more peaceful society if we expand off the Earth and reap the wealth of the solar system. I try to use facts in my writing. In The Hive, everything is based upon either real technology or plausible technology based on the laws of physics. I use real places and people. My wife, Lareesa has been a huge help with bringing my Russian characters to life. I want to show that despite many set backs that we see, humanities’ future is not one of war and decreasing resources but a future of abundance for all.

What are you doing next? When can we expect to see you touring online or on the road?
Right now, I’m already close to 100 pages into my second novel and planning three more. Novel two is more of a political science fiction story with a squabble over the Moon’s resources and how this is resolved.

My other book that is still an idea combines aliens and time travel with 17th century pirates and I have a mystery about scammers who marry and then dispose of their husbands as well as a comedy about the crazy stuff that happened when bringing my wife here from Ukraine to get married in America. Right now, I'm, planning a book launch party for January in my home city of Saint Augustine , FL and I have a web site for promoting my first book, The Hive. www.freewebs.com/chrisbfla