#amy bechtel

[tediousreviews]

Analog (July/August 1999)

Minus last week but one's novella, it's time for the Analog double issue.

We have one more novella, a trio of novelettes, and a trio of short stories. Plus, we have the conclusion to the Quantum Rose serial.

Please accept my thoroughly insincere apology for the delay in this review, and proceed beyond the cut.

Serial

The Quantum Rose, Catherine Asaro

Ok, so over the last two episodes our heroine avoided being forced into a marriage by being forced into another marriage, learned her new husband was a telepath with a drinking problem, and also learned that she was part of a genetically engineered slave-race. Fun stuff.

This time she gets kidnapped, forced back into the original marriage, raped repeatedly, and then stuck in the middle of a really obnoxious trial centered around coercing her into talking about who exactly is coercing her more.

Cheery.

Novella

Emperor Penguins, Joseph Manzione

As far as reasons for advanced cultures initiating first contact go, using us as an excuse to advance legislation allowing males to sue for custody of their children in a divorce is... well the particulars are a bit rare but the general tone is about average I'd say.

Novelettes

As Time Goes By, Amy Bechtel

More in the ongoing adventures of a vet, some sea monsters, and a few other people.

Eh, it was a nice little bit of weirdness.

Live Bait, Shane Tourtellotte

In the future, people will entertain themselves by passing through living not-whales the long way. Some other people with have problems with this. Also murder.

Because of course the environmentalists have to be murderers.

E-Mage, Rajnar Vajra

Ugh. Why do so many hacking stories inexplicably involve VR and bizarre metaphors?

Don't answer that.

Short Stories

Tempora Mutantur, H.G. Stratmann

Time travel, a stupid hoax that wouldn't work, and the world's worst brother.

You lost me at time travel.

Out of Warranty, Gordon Gross

Nanites and evil corporations.

I'm pretty sure I've reviewed an almost identical and clearly superior story, although whether it was in Analog or Asimov's I couldn't tell you and I'm not willing to go looking.

GCEA, Laurence M. Janifer

It's a carnival mystery story with like two throw away lines to make it SF. Also random ukelele references that I had to look up and be disappointed by.

The whole "I forgot this story was supposed to be SF, better make it IN SPACE." thing keeps almost getting me in trouble with my fake advice column. So I sympathize.

Final Thoughts

I mean, I guess I could with this one, but let's just let it slide.

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[tediousreviews]

Analog (May 1998)

Back to Analog. Let's ignore the essay this time, and stick to the ongoing serial, the two novelettes, and the short story.

Serial

The Children Star (Part Two of Four), Joan Slonczewski

A continuation from last time. Having abducted a dying girl from a plague-ridden and massively overpopulated world, our hero develops buyers remorse when he looks at her medical bills and starts wishing he'd left her to die. Also there's some more corporate bullshit, a xenocide by terraforming plot, and still more sucky future being sucky.

I actually hate overpopulation plots. You see, the demographic transition theory was proposed in 1929. Massively oversimplified, the idea is basically that the less life sucks, the slower population grows. It's a theory that's well supported by the data.

So if the future sucks and has overpopulation, the issue should be less that the future sucks because there is overpopulation, which the author wrongly believes is inevitable, and more that there's overpopulation because the future sucks because science fiction writers are obscenely pessimistic about the future.

Novelettes

The Sword Unswayed, Stephen Goldin

Murder and aliens and an argument between feminists over the relative importance of fighting the general forces of cultural repression and the specific forces of female oppression. Also Shakespeare.

It was a pretty good murder mystery, but I'd probably have liked it better if I'd read the 1994 story it was a sequel to.

Yellow and Orange Blues, Amy Bechtel

It's probably not a good idea to date your employees. But then as a vet it's probably a bad idea to conceal the existence of new species just because one of your client wants to keep them as pets.

Screw ethics though, there's sex and money to be had.

Short Story

The Human Touch, H. G. Stratmann

Basically a less funny version of the SNL Old Glory Insurance bit, made even less funny by using involuntary sex reassignment surgery as a punchline twice.

Final Thoughts

I mean, maybe... but no.

[caseremains]

It was a balmy day in Wyoming on July 24 1997, when Amy Bechtel went for her afternoon run. For Amy, an athletic and strong distance runner, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Enrolled in an upcoming 10km, she even had hopes to compete in the 2000 Olympics. But after this particular balmy day, the promising 24-year-old would never be seen again.

Amy's to-do list was a long one that morning, with a children's fitness class to teach, utility companies to call and photos to be framed. Her final stop before her run was at Gallery 331, where the owner noted she seemed in something of a hurry, and from there she headed to Shoshone National Forest. A sprawling forestland of mostly untouched wilderness, Shoshone covers almost 2.5 million acres of ground and is home to over 1300 miles of trails. Home to hundreds of bears and cougars, it is a place of danger as well as beauty, with the kind of wholesome American scenery you might normally find on a postcard.

When Amy had not returned home by 10:30 that night, her husband Steve reported her missing. The young couple had been married for just over a year, and by all accounts had a relationship to match their picture-perfect town. A search and rescue team was immediately arranged, and in less than 3 hours Amy's white Toyota was discovered. Parked up beside a mountain road, the car was unlocked, the keys under Amy's long to-do list sat on top of the passenger's seat. Assuming she had gotten lost or injured, Steve rallied up some friends and, along with the deputies, searched fruitlessly through the night. By day three, over a hundred people aided by dogs, horses, ATVs and helicopters were searching the 30 mile radius around Amy's abandoned car.

As time passed and there still no sign of Amy, police began to take a closer look at Steve Bechtel. Public suspicion was fuelled when it was revealed that not only had Steve refused to take a lie detector test, but that detectives had also uncovered some troubling journal entries depicting male dominance and violence towards women. However, Steve had a solid alibi, having been rock climbing with a friend almost 80 miles away. The journal entries, he claimed, were lyrics for his band.

An attractive, white, middle class woman, Amy's disappearance garnered significant media attention, and at one point the police were receiving around 1000 calls a day of potential tips and hazy eyewitness accounts. Yet over 20 years later, there is not a single shred of physical evidence that can tell us what became of Amy Bechtel. In the community's initial optimism that this was a simple case of a missing runner, it took a full week before the area was declared a crime scene. Added to that an intense focus on Steve, and the police investigation was compromised from the start.

One of the thousands of tips was called in by Richard Eaton, who reported that his brother Dale would often camp in the area where Amy was found. If it were anyone else, this may have seemed insignificant, but Dale Eaton was a prime suspect in the Great Basin Murders, a series of brutal killings where female victims were sexually assaulted and murdered before being dumped along remote highways. DNA taken from a 1998 arrest would eventually link Dale Eaton to the rape and stabbing of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell. A search of Eaton's house, just an hour and 45 minutes from Amy's hometown of Lander, uncovered Kimmell's car buried on his property, along with women's clothing, purses, and newspaper articles concerning other murders.

Convicted of Kimmell's murder in 2004, Dale Eaton was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death, though this was overturned in 2014. Now serving a life sentence plus 50 years, Eaton will spend the rest of his days in Wyoming State Penitentiary. He has refused to ever discuss the case of Amy Wroe Bechtel.

For more missing persons cases and unsolved mysteries, head over to my new website www.caseremains.com

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