If the Multiverse were real and you had the sci-fi device that lets you skip between realities, what works would you like to see that never came to pass in our world? Some of mine:
later music from a Gershwin who never developed a brain tumor.
More Discworld books from a Pratchett who didn’t get Alzheimers.
Mathematics from a Galois who didn’t die in a duel.
The albums the Beatles made in the seventies after they buried the hatchet & got back with George Martin.
A few more Travis McGee books from John Mcdonald who survived heart surgery in 1986.
More paintings from Carravagio who survived his trip to Rome.
Also more Discworld books. Firefly seasons where Fox didn’t screw it up. Andy Griffith episodes where Don Knox didn’t quit mid-series. Star Wars movies where Lucas did episodes 7-9 first with the original cast and a script doctor.
Speaking of which, I just got a bunch of $5 tickets to Rockapalooza, who wants to go?
That’s the two-week festival with the Doors, Jimi, Janis, Derek & The Dominos, The Byrds (with Gram and Clarence), The Who (with John and Keith), and Chicago (with Terry Kath… the alternate timeline where they didn’t become a lounge act… oh well, then, the skinny Elvis from that universe, too).
Oh, almost forgot the Beach Boys with a mentally healthy Brian Wilson, and the Beatles from the timeline where Paul didn’t die…
The albums Stevie Wonder made after not dying in a car crash in 1973
The books Stephen King wrote after not being killed by a van in 1999 (including the rest of the Dark Tower series)
The Lord of the Rings movies Peter Jackson would have made if he had gotten funding to split it into more than one film
And, it probably wouldn’t have amounted to much, since he was going deaf anyway, but it’d be interesting to hear the music Ludwig van Beethoven would have come up with if he hadn’t decided to commit suicide in despair over losing his hearing in 1802.
Seeing how Jimi Hendrix would have creatively matured if he hadn’t died at 27. He was going in an increasingly jazzy direction before his death.
On the other side of the coin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s reputation was really brought down by the continuing high output but increasingly inferior quality of his work from around his mid-30s on. If he had just retired young and stopped writing music at say, age 33, he might be remembered as one of the greatest classical composers in history.
But I think Dylan still had some great albums in him if he hadn’t died in that motorcycle accident in 1966.
$5? That’s pretty steep. But if you post the UURL I’ll see if I can make it. Just need to (bang!) get this stupid (thud) co-ordinate convolver to (whack!) fire up for once. And yes, I HAVE tested the power supply; it’s the first thing you check. (Kick!) Maybe if I…
Ah, I had skimmed over the thread and I thought I was the first to mention Jimi. I overlooked this at first.
Random observation-- though I can imagine an alternate future where Jimi lived and output more work, I sometimes think that for some people, like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, there can be no other reality where they lived to output more work-- at least not similar at all to their signature styles. That the way they lived and died is integral to who they were and the type of music they put out.
Great list! I’d add Orson Welles. It boggles my mind to imagine the great movies he would have made if he hadn’t been electrocuted in that freak accident on the set of The Magnificent Ambersons.
Yeah I was going say Hendrix’s later work too. Of all the rock and roll causalities of the era, that is one that I think could have actually changed the direction of music. If Hendrix gets clean, loses the sketchy management (which was sketchy even by the standards of rock and roll management) there is no telling what he could have done musically.
Gershwin’s always been the big one for me; Janis Joplin as well.
I don’t think Franz Schubert has been mentioned.
More obscure - what would have happened if Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of the early Grateful Dead hadn’t got sick in 1972 and died in 1973. What would the band have turned into? I’ll admit it’s quite possible he would have quit the band shortly anyway; his style wasn’t necessarily in sync with where the band was going even as early as 1970. Doubt the band would have actually pushed him out; it wasn’t their style.
John Boorman’s version of Lord of the Rings (It would have been even weirder than Zardoz.)
A completed version of Steinbeck’s The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.
Shakespeare’s version of King Arthur. I want Merlin’s prophesy to Vortigern, done as a grand Shakespearean soliloquy. And Morgause and Mordred, plotting and scheming like Lady Macbeth and Richard III.
Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, starring Chuck Connors.
What a Way to Go!, starring Marilyn Monroe. (Shirley MacLaine’s version is good, but it was written for Marilyn.)
Babylon Five, where the network committed to all five seasons from the beginning, and where they didn’t have to re-write major storylines because an important actor suddenly had to be replaced.