Phoenix, by HG Stratmann

The October 1998 Analog certainly has a mixed bag of stories. "Phoenix", by HG Stratmann, was certainly not to my liking. The short story was one long extended string of puns, all related to tobacco in general and cigarettes in particular. The main character, an expectant mother with a 2 pack a day habit is visited by a "man from the future" who begs her to not quit, but to increase her smoking, because her unborn baby's dna was changed by her habit and that leads him to become the inventer of...oh, let's see...faster than light travel, gravity control, etc, etc, etc. So, she hides her habit from her husband, has her baby, and dies of cancer 9 years later.

The baby, toddler, young boy is constantly pushed and prodded by his mother to show his genius...and then berated when he doesn't live up to her expectations. She dies thinking he, and she, was a failure. The boy, on the other hand, carrying a massive load of guilt from having his wished that his mother would just die and having it come true, does go on to become the inventor of all the above. Story ends...and what was the point? Er, that smoking can cause genetic mutations in fetuses, that smoking leads to cancer and early death, that pushing a child, any child, is often counter productive, or that guilt is a wonderful motivator? Or perhaps the point was just that Mr. Stratmann wanted to impress us with the clever way he was able to insert his many tobacco puns into a time travel story?

This was the second "time-travel" story I read from this issue, O'Carolan's Revenge was the first. This one was several steps down, and I count it as an hour wasted. Sorry, oh so clever, Mr. Stratmann.