SF by Starlight: "The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanual Escobada" by ?

SF by Starlight:

Too often in a critical review magazine the gripes, complaints, and negative aspects of reviewing nearly 1,000 stories each year in the short SF field seem to take undue precedence. This feature will emphasize the opposite. Its sole purpose will be to draw attention to those works deemed to be of an exceptionally high quality by the reviewing staff.

 Past SF by Starlight

Posted on 2003-01-15 Reviewed by Steven H Silver The magazine Nemonymous is dedicated to providing readers with the opportunity to enjoy stories without the prejudicing baggage of knowing the names of the authors of the pieces included in it. The authors’ names are only revealed in the following issue. Although the second issue is practically an unrelenting assault of depression, despair and isolation, it does include one rather intriguing gem in the story "The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanual Escobada." This piece is written as a retrospective on the film career of a Brazilian filmmaker who unaccountably disappeared while making a film entitled Nos Olvidamos?. Rather than examine the causes of his disappearance, it is a straightforward examination of his body of work, noting his often strange casting and filming techniques, treating Escobada as a real director whose work would have graced film festivals and developed cult followings. The author has also provided a series of endnotes to explain where the information about Escobada comes from, and it is these endnotes that help to fully bring the mystery to life. As the reader continues, he learns that not only has Escobada vanished, but following his disappearance all of his films faded from memory and existence. Any articles which had been written about him also faded from the pages of the journals which featured them, to be replaced by other articles. This is all related in a simple and documentary style even as the reader begins to feel as if the story should be more reminiscent of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The fact that the author chose not to follow that route adds to the chilling nature of the tale. To further blur the line between the fiction of Escobada and the reality of his disappearance, the author refers to a website, which actually does exist, presumably as a pseudonymous creation of the anonymous author. The referenced website also points to a second site about Escobada, also presumably by the author. Perhaps most striking about "The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanual Escobada" is the fact that the descriptions of his completed films cause the reader to want to rush out to a video store and find copies of them, except, of course, they never existed and, as the story would have it, no longer exist even if they once did. In all, "The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanual Escobada" is reminiscent of an episode of The Twilight Zone, creating a world in which the inexplicable can, and does, happen without the need for an explanation. "The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanual Escobada" by ? Nemonymous 2 May 2002 www.nemonymous.com Read and download award-winning fiction on your PDA or computer at Fictionwise.com. Help support Tangent, and read some great stories! You will even find some of the stories we reviewed here... Search Fictionwise