Plot
The story begins as a deadly snowfall covers Buenos Aires and the surrounding metropolitan area, wiping out most life in a few hours. Juan Salvo, along with a couple of friends (Favalli, Lucas and Polski who were playing truco at his house), his wife and his daughter remain safe from the lethal snowflakes thanks to the protection of Juan Salvo's home and the cleverness of Favalli. They soon get organized in order to survive the ordeal, making special suits to leave the house protected from the snow and gather supplies. During these trips they find Pablo, a twelve year-old boy, and realize that other, crazed or needy survivors have become as much of a threat as the deadly snow.
A few days into the snowfall they find out the true nature of the strange phenomenon: an extraterrestrial invasion to Earth, and get enlisted into an improvised resistance army to fight the invaders back. During this time, Salvo meets and befriends a few of his fellow enlisted soldiers, namely Franco, a lathe operator, and a journalist named Mosca. As the resistance marches towards the country's capital city they fight on different occasions against giant insects (cascarudos, "beetles"), a humanoid species with many more fingers than humans, especially on their right hands (Manos, "Hands"), giant elephantine beasts capable of knocking buildings down ("Gurbos"), and even fellow men who were captured (hombres-robot, "robot-men"). As it turns out, all of these beings are just pawns, remotely controlled through implants or fear devices by the real invaders, los Ellos ("Them"), eldritch creatures who remain hidden, controlling everything from the distance.
After managing a few victories, the resistance is finally ambushed and reduced to just a few men, whereupon Juan Salvo decides to return to his wife and daughter intent on going into hiding. However, a passing ICBM (which doesn't detonate much to their surprise) convinces Favalli and Franco that a bigger, even global, war is starting and that they can't return empty-handed now, Salvo reluctantly agrees to join them. After the trio manages to land a heavy blow to the aliens' HQ in Buenos Aires, taking down the "anti-nukes field", they flee and Buenos Aires is later leveled by a nuclear warhead.
Eventually, the aliens lure the pockets of survivors throughout the country to "snow-free zones" as part of an elaborate ruse. Salvo's group is forced to split, and he tries to escape with his wife and daughter using one of the alien spaceships, but he accidentally triggers a time traveling apparatus in the craft. As a result, the three are lost in separate time dimensions known as "continuums". Juan Salvo begins to travel through time seeking for them, eventually getting the name of Eternauta, a voyager of eternity.
Read more about this topic: El Eternauta
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)