Laurel Anne Hill

I stare at the crimson printing on my computer screen. Crisp black lines frame electronic words of caution. What is this, anyway? The 1877 U.S. Senatorial report on Chinese immigration I Googled? Or the “boxed warning” for a toxic drug?

The red letters form an introductory disclaimer of sorts, an alert regarding nineteenth-century political incorrectness. The Senatorial report’s contents will reflect the attitudes of yesteryear’s Americans. In other words, readers with sensitive ears, beware. Still, I need to study sections of this 1,281-page document to blog about railroad workers from China. My finger tabs through the report’s opening pages.

“There is a vast hive from which Chinese immigrants may swarm…,” the report indicates. “They are cruel and indifferent to their sick…inferior in mental and moral qualities…”

Anger warms my face. The historical report I prepare to read in depth is a verbal cesspool of toxic prejudice. Worse than I expected. Even the testimony of Charles Crocker–-the infamous railroad executive who respected the tremendous contribution of Chinese laborers in building the U.S. Transcontinental Railway–oozes stereotypes. I just began this morning’s immigrant-experience research project and already my blood pressure soars.

Now please don’t consider me naïve. Years ago, I learned about the anti-Chinese legislation passed in nineteenth-century America: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (to keep “them” out) and various anti-miscegenation laws (to prevent interracial marriages). U.S. immigration policy muddle-ups are not confined to the twenty-first century. That’s one of several reasons why I wrote my new short story, “Moon-Flame Woman.” I hope “Moon-Flame Woman” will help readers picture all immigrants as distinct individuals with gifts, fears, hopes and dreams.

The setting for “Moon-Flame Woman” is a North American railroad construction camp in 1866. In my story, Cho Ting-Lam has lost self-respect. She, a slave, has neither a husband nor sons. Disguised as a man, Cho Ting-Lam uses explosives, crystal technology and Qi to bore railroad tunnels through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then a prejudiced railroad superintendent endangers her and her people.

“Moon Flame Woman,” is scheduled for publication in the upcoming Shanghai Steam Anthology (Absolute XPress, November 2012). Shanghai Steam is a unique mashup of steampunk (advanced technology through steam-age mechanical devices) and the Chinese literary genre known as Wuxia (loosely translated as martial hero).

I invite you to visit the worlds within Shanghai Steam. From ancient China to a future Mars, from the British Empire to the Old West, nineteen authors will show you worlds with alcohol-fueled dragons, philosophical automatons, and Qi-powered machines both wondrous and strange in tales of vengeance, paper lantern revolutions and flying monks. I also wish to thank Teresa LeYung-Ryan for her pre-submission review of my “Moon-Flame Woman” manuscript. Teresa provided valuable advice which strengthened my story.

Below, I list the Shanghai Steam table of contents. For more information about the anthology and its authors, visit the Shanghai Steam Facebook page.

Warm wishes,

Laurel Anne Hill
Author of Heroes Arise, an award-winning novel about breaking the cycle of vengeance.
http://www.laurelannehill.com

ShanghaiSteam-2.x3.0x-300dp-C12 — SHANGHAI STEAM ANTHOLOGY

Shanghai Steam Anthology

Table of Contents

The Fivefold Proverbs of Zhen Xiaquan

Tim Ford

Qin Yun’s Mechanical Dragon and the Cricket Spies

Amanda Clark

Moon-Flame Woman

Laurel Anne Hill

Love and Rockets at the Siege of Peking

K. H. Vaughan

The Master and the Guest

Crystal Koo

Ming Jie and the Coffee Maker of Doom

Brent Nichols

A Hero Faces the Celestial Empire; A Death by Fire is Avenged by Water

Julia A. Rosenthal

Riding the Wind

William H. Keith

Mistress of the Pearl Dragon

Shen Braun

Song of My Heart

Jennifer Rahn

Last Flight of the Lóng Qíshì

Emily Mah

Protection from Assassins

Frances Pauli

Seeds of the Lotus
Camille Alexa

The Ability of Lightness

Tim Reynolds

Fire in the Sky

Ray Dean

The Legend of Wong Heng Li

Frank Larnerd

Flying Devils

Derwin Mak

Legend of the Secret Masterpiece

Nick Tramdack

Jing Ke Before the Principle of Order

Minsoo Kang

bigballofstring edited 50 percent — "I can do anything with a big ball of string" (Credit Marion Holland, 1958)

Strings: Vibrating strands of “energy,” at the heart of matter, photons and gravity. The different frequencies of strings produce the different subatomic particles. A fundamental string is called an f-string. String theory is not yet testable or observable.

Branes: “Membranes” or other places where strings attach. For example,

D0 Brane: A point particle. An f-string can end there.

D1 Brane: Like a string, but with more mass per unit length. Also called a D-string. An f-string can end there.

D2 Brane: A brane with two dimensions.

D3 Brane: A brane with three dimensions. An f-string or D-string can end there.

Open Strings: Have one or both ends tied to a brane.

Closed Strings: Ends are attached to each other.

Gravitons: Hypothetical elementary particles/closed strings with zero mass.

M-Theory: String theory with eleven-dimensional supergravity. (Alternate theories stipulate 10 or 26 dimensions.) M-Theory allows a string to stretch into a brane. Eliminates tachyons.

Relativistic String: The string of String Theory.

String Worldsheet: A “topographical map” of how a string is supposed to move in spacetime.

Supergravity: A theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity.

Supersymmetry: A fermion must exist for every boson and a boson for every fermion.

Tachyon: A relativistic string with a negative mass squared (an imaginary number).

Particle Physics I-A

Quarks: Elementary particles in the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and fundamental constituents of matter. Quarks have quirks: electric charge, color charge (which has nothing to do with color), mass, spin and flavor (which has nothing to do with taste).

Hadron: A composite particle made of quarks held together by the strong nuclear force. Hadrons are baryons (made of 3 quarks) or mesons (made of a quark, antiquark and gluon field). All free hadrons except the proton and anti-proton are unstable.

Boson: A particle with an integer spin. Bosons can be fundamental particles such as photons, the Higgs Boson, gluons and the hypothetical (massless) graviton. Bosons can be composite particles such as the meson. Bosons are often force carrier particles. More than one boson can occupy the same quantum state at any given time.

Fermion: A particle with a half-integer spin. Fermions can be elementary particles such as an electron. Fermions can be composite particles such as protons, neutrons or the helium-3 atom. Fermions are usually associated with matter. A particle containing an odd number of fermions is itself a fermion: it will have half-integer spin. Only one fermion can occupy a particular quantum state at any given time. If more than one fermion occupies the same physical space, at least one property of each fermion, such as its spin, must be different.

Force Carriers:

Photons: The force carriers of the electromagnetic field.

W & Z bosons: The force carriers which mediate the weak nuclear force.

Gluons: The fundamental force carriers underlying the strong nuclear force.

Higgs bosons: Force carriers that give other particles mass.

Duality: Remember the old Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the other?” With a duality, “One of these things is not like the other but can be.”

General Relativity: Describes the curvature of spacetime and distribution of matter throughout spacetime. Matter warps space. Warps and curves in the fabric of space create gravity.

Special Relativity: (E = MC²) A special case of general relativity that does not include gravity.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: The more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.

Singularities: Spacetime boundaries, such as paths of light and falling particles coming to an abrupt end.

Standard Model of Particle Physics: Incorporates electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear interactions, but not gravity.

Thank you to all who attended the “String Theory for Dummies” panel on 9/3/12. In addition, thank you Marion Holland for creating “A Big Ball of String,” published in 1958. I have read the book to children and grandchildren and recently found and purchased a copy at a “book rescue” site online. May your beautiful story last forever.

Warm wishes,

Laurel Anne Hill
Author of “Heroes Arise” (http://www.laurelannehill.com)

Steampunk, Wuxia and the Immigrant Experience (by Laurel Anne Hill)

String Theory for Dummies Information Sheet (from WorldCon 2012)

Archives for September 2012