More Words, Deeper Hole

``The Winds of Change'' particularly disappoints me because, for all its other flaws, it's also about the only alternate-history story Asimov ever wrote (I can't actually think of another, but I want to give myself an out just in case, and I don't count that F&SF science essay where he worked out what it would look like if you replaced Uranus with Alpha Centauri B --- apparently a close enough match as that system were understood at the time for bodies in orbit --- and guessed how Greek mythology could have made that out as the myth of Prometheus worked out in the sky, though it's a cool idea).

Given that he had a pretty good command of the development of western civilization, and the temperament to write history as vast forces that work themselves out in the peculiarities and coincidences of individual lives, he could've probably done a fascinating novel where, say, penicillin gets discovered in 19th century Russia, or Leibniz gets to be King George's court astronomer, or something like that, and if he were ever tempted to write one he never mentioned. Instead we got ``The Winds of Change''.