40 roars, 50 furious, 60 howlers.: Marine science fiction

By G.G. Melies

Marine science fiction

The adventure centers its story on Lara and Julio, a newly married couple seeking to escape the burden of technology and the massiveness of modern life, who embarks in Ushuaia on a so-called "barefoot cruise" in the year 2213 to Cape Horns and on a themed voyage set in 1933, to an adventure honeymoon on an old historical wooden schooner launched that same year called Destino. In it, together with Álvaro, a brave and particular fanatic Captain of the golden age of science fiction, who treasures as guardian antiquities, they will join a heterogeneous passage, to face problems of coexistence, a strange madness unleashed among the crew and a sudden and curious contact of the third kind from strange lights in the Antarctic Glacier Sea that could make even the most incredulous of observers doubt.

Marine fiction with slight touches of existentialism and humor, which becomes a certain kind of science fiction from advanced chapters, depending on the imagination of the reader, due to the similarities and parallels that the genetic spirit of human exploration maintains throughout history, and it is repeated in new frontiers and settings. This story tries to show in its plot in a very subtle way the similarities between marine and space exploration.
Inspired by Jules Verne's 1864 book, "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras", something by Agatha Christie, and the solo feat of the Argentine navigator Vito Dumas, who traveled in 1942 "The Impossible Route" that of "The Forty Roarings", in a boat of 9.55 meters. long and 3.30 wide, the Lehg II.

If we have to guess where science fiction was born, we may have to look out to the sea ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Feb 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781071550878

Book preview

Table of Contents

40 roars, | 50 furious, | 60 howlers.

1) What could go wrong?

Live life on a cruise in barefoot!

2) Perfect strangers.

3) Howls.

4) Captain Alvaro: The guardian of all things.

5) The currembo.

6) Crying dry.

7) Cape Horn sailing.

Live life on a cruise in barefoot!

8) Returning to Gaia.

9) Moonlight over asteroid field.

10) Paranoia for gravitational assistance.

11) Shoshana.

12) White lighting.

40 roars,

50 furious,

60 howlers.

Paranoia for gravitational assistance.

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Written by G.G. Melies

From 1/6/2015 to 07/07/2016.

Funes-Argentina

All rights reserved.

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1)  What could go wrong?

2)  Perfect strangers.

3)  Howls.

4)  Captain Alvaro: The guardian of all things.

5)  The currembo.

6)  Crying dry.

7)  Cape Horn sailing.

8)  Returning to Gaia.

9)  Moonlight over asteroid field.

10)  Paranoia for gravitational assistance.

11)  Shoshana.

12)  White lighting.

We will not stop exploring and the end of our exploration will be to find the starting point and see the place for the first time

TS Eliot (Anglo-American poet, playwright, and literary critic)

There is no other place in nature that presents more wild and horrifying visions

James Cook, 1775, English sailor and explorer Master and Commander of the HMS Resolution when passing Cape Horn for the second time, returning from searching the mythical Terra Australis (Australia).

1) What could go wrong?

Coherence would have suggested that it be an innocuous fourteenth Wednesday, but it barely cleared her throat and should have given in her eternal aphony as a submissive wife, before the relevant, overwhelming and determined character of the name of the ship that hinted at who was setting the dates, and we set sail from honeymoon heading to Cape horn from the port of Ushuaia, on April 13, 2213. That particular Tuesday in our lives looked rainy, cold and sad; But if that didn't seem to matter to us, much less to the Captain of the ship, who, wet from head to toe, without a paltry hint of being affected by the weather, and smelling like fuel from a recent spill in the dock that splashed him, gave orders and jobs to every crew member who passed him by. The heavy and intoxicating atmosphere generated by fuel vapors was a new experience for everyone, a century ago that oil had ceased to be profitable, and replaced by hydrogen and electricity was only allowed for use in historical machineries, such as Destino , an old schooner with masculine name launched in 1933, with three poles, a few meters in length and the same number of cabins, and although some subtle but necessary modifications throughout the centuries gave it a slight dieselpunk nuance, such as a sharp one Tungsten carbide cutter for cutting ice banks, a thick acrylic enclosure for a winter conservatory on deck, or a pair of powerful diesel engines from a manufacturer from a couple of decades after its launch, no one knew for sure how much of anachronistic details that we overlooked, but..., who knows so much about nautical history like how to find the error?

This is how we liked it together with Lara, we called it a romantic and reserved double R cruise ship, with few people unlike those gigantic and monstrous ocean liners with ten thousand souls on board, compulsively shopping in shopping malls, dancing at massive Virtual reality parties in large empty rooms, turning their backs on the ocean, or watching the water and everything that happens in it from fifteen floors high. And that is what we renounced, modern life. The signed contract obliged us to deliver all kinds of technology after 1933, it was a thematic trip to self-knowledge, to coexist as humans did before alienating..., although in those years according to history everyone was. Only printed books were available, obviously original classics up to that time and by the way, with brown sheets for centuries, board games, old vinyl records, and an old celluloid film projector, in black and white. Fate was literally frozen in that year. The targeted advertising that fell on my quantum corneas said...

Live life on a cruise in barefoot!

Wake up to reality, see the world with your own eyes the way they lived three hundred years ago..., before electronics, before digital computing, before quantum, before the madness.

Real-life awaits you, forget your nation, be a citizen of the planet. Experience unlocking your explorer gene, be a traveler to the unknown of your passions and fears in the romantic and beautiful schooner Destino, where you will see with your eyes the very desire to live life pushed by the pure marine wind, and the wisdom of the crazy will be your faithful advisor. Leave behind the desire for money, like the boring and monotonous city life.

ESCAPE FROM REALITY TO YOUR REALITY!

Sailing cruise on the magnificent old schooner Destino from 1933.

Departure 04/13/2213 from the port of Ushuaia. Space is limited.

Promotional discount for honeymooners.

We loved that! The risk, the lack of control of the future, experiencing new things. In a true and crisp wooden boat of almost three centuries and 44.5 meters in length, we could surely shudder with the starry sky and with storms at sea, marvel at reddish reflections of sunrises and sunsets just a few meters from the level of the quiet Pacific, hang our bare feet overboard, so you can feel the ocean caressing them a few knots at a leisurely speed, while some ripe and juicy fruit dissolves in your mouth and you feel the sea breeze slipping playful and capricious between sails, ropes, and masts. The only thing I hated was fishing, but I loved eating fish, and although Captain Alvaro promised me that it would be the other way around at the end of this trip, I vowed to enjoy every bite until that day inclusive.

While Ushuaia was left behind, the cold pushed us all to the warm and small dining room, and in a certain and precise way where the old and beautiful coffee machine was, an ideal time to meet with the other couples since there were no waiters in the ship one had to take charge as in his own house with guests and vice versa. Each one professed a different religion, and each carried his wife with him, except the Captain, who unfortunately was an atheist and single, like old Larsen, who was a widower and drunk. At the moment cordiality walked hand in hand with the aroma of the coffee, and sympathy flowed from inside the Larsen whiskey flask, which generously put one by one equal amount in our cups.

The bottle comes from a box I found in the basement of my late brother's house; it was kept there unopened for fifty years. That was the first place I went to after his funeral.

Do you mean to tell me it's a sixty-two-year-old whiskey? I asked surprised and making numbers.

Yes.

And do you take it with coffee?

I even put the toothpaste on my brush, and I swish with it, he replied cordially and seriously.

Needless to say, after what was shared by the old man, we were all his friend, and by the number of cups we served, some people with bright and red faces, in which I had to join in an upstart way, we had anecdotes with the brand-new perfect stranger from our earliest childhood, but I must repeat once more..., except the Captain, who came down from the deck still wet, with persistent anger, but without showing signs of being cold. We all fell silent as we watched him, from his point of view it will have been annoying, but his appearance couldn't go unnoticed. The water that flowed from his soggy head ran laboriously and forced by the deep lines of the old sailor on his face to enter his thick beard between black and gray, which gushed and dripped like a shapeless piece of tow. I thought, when observing it carefully, that it was not normal that it did not give glimpses of freezing, the laws of physics and human biology do not allow any other type of reaction, and even being privileged with the best circulatory system that nature can grant, his stance and integrity would have challenged it only on the whim that his own dictated. Seeing him stoic and haughty with his firm, immovable pulse, with his clothes glued to his body by excess water and knowing that it extracts heat seven times faster, was only attributable to an alienated or the devil himself. He himself looked like a defiant mythological being from another world; but something I had to admit, it reminded me of a brave captain of some classic novel to follow on his adventures to the unexplored ends of the world. The days would show me my first impression of the noble and strong of his spirit and the equal adjectives of his convictions.

Alvaro immediately perceived the humorous atmosphere and noticed that it was out of place.

It's strange... he said with an intrigued face. Here I smell fuel too!..., but it is of some other type, he joked breaking the ice.

We all celebrated the joke, and Larsen put a cup of coffee in his hands.

This fuel will help you with the weather, Captain, and he poured whiskey into that coffee too.

Alvaro took a few sips and with a surprising gesture of complacency brought the cup back to the old man...

It's still hot, friend, could you cool it down a little?

That's how I like it, that's the change of mood I was looking for, answered the old man, and he cooled the coffee a little more.

You must be crazy, Alvaro reasoned, standing in his own puddle while enjoying his coffee. They give their Captain a drink a few hours after crossing Cape Horn..., the advertising offered an adventure trip, not assisted suicide.

Captain! What is the best technique to cross Cape Horn? Lara asked.

Do it only in nightmares..., because you will never have pleasant dreams with him. But if we are going to try it in real life, I recommend a box of pills for motion sickness, another box of pills for sleeping, and if you profess a faith use it.

So, in my case I won't notice a difference, Larsen replied.

But..., if I fall asleep with those pills, I won't find out that something is happening, Lara said seriously.

Exactly, said the Captain. I have told you what is the best way for me, that would solve the problem of the number of people to help during an eventual tragedy.

Lara, like many of the passages, was left by that silent answer, serious and confused response. Alvaro attacked...

The word help does not exist in the Cape Horn lexicon. You just sink submissive..., and that's it. No one will come.

Alvaro took a single sip, thanked, and went to his cabin to put on dry clothes. From our part, with Lara, we went to ours to dismantle suitcases, and I think that behind us everyone followed suit. The bow cabin was ours, the only one available when making reservations. Warm and triangular, but with separate beds, it would not be ideal for a newly married couple, but we would use inventiveness, something that we are not lacking, added to that the same location in the bow would accentuate effects. Lara wore her own light, but not the one of every day, it shone even more brightly than usual, her face was exactly like the party room the night before at the precise moment of our entry, so beautiful, bright, friendly and warm that one would want to stay looking at it without looking away.

Where did I put the medicine bag? she asked somewhat nervously pulling me out of the trance.

Here you are, my drug dealer and brand-new wife, I joked and she replied with a gesture of false anger.

You don't lose hope, do you? I continued the topic looking for problems, faithful to my joking unconsciousness.

Hope for what?

To contract a plague.

A cautious woman is worth ten.

We kissed, we checked the corners of the cabin, I watched by the dormer while Ushuaia disappeared and I got bored.

Let's go outside, I'm restless, I said as a child who is bored with his mother.

Okay, go while I'm done. Do not fight with any other child, she answered feeling the same.

I went back to the dining room, I did not find anyone there, the old stainless steel cups we drank from were piled in the kitchen sink waiting for someone to wash them, just as I said, we had to take care of our own house with guests and vice versa. I took my jacket from all those hanging on the rack and went up on deck. The cold wind was like a freight train without brakes direct to my face, and unnerved I hesitated to climb another step; but I was looking for adventure, so I closed the door, straightened my torso and fearfully brave climbed up. Immediately my eyes dried and seemed to see less, I had to blink continuously to lubricate them while the wind in my ears reminded me of my recent visit to the hairdresser two days before the wedding, I covered my head and tightly tightened the cord. I also remembered Lara ten hours earlier in the warm hotel room posing in the tiny bikini she'd wear on the final days of the trip, in Polynesia, and it was beginning to seem like a bizarre and distant dream that was fading from my mind. On deck, I noticed next to the mainmast, in what would be the ceiling of the dining room, the highest point to observe the horizon, a strange being with four legs and two heads who laughed irresponsibly as it lost its balance each time that Destino was jumping a wave. The heads pointed out that they belonged to Daiana and Luciano, she was inside his gigantic jacket, and because she was small, she fit there as a baby kangaroo sheltered from the cold. I approached them while the wind buzzed intimidating souls; and my dry eyes, seeing the monstrous storm, black, white and dark blue, erect as a colossus to infinity, which blinded the same will of gallantry with dread, they understood in that sublime instant the passion for marine storms in the paintings by William Turner.

I reached out to them, grabbing me strongly from everything and joking with the weather.

Is there a place for another in there?! I asked out loud because the wind did