But of all of these, the online version of the entire Library of Alexandria after it survived Caesar’s troops and was moved to a safe location out in the desert where it survived the next millennia of upheaval would be top of my list.
Also the complete set of Maya codices that survived the Spanish conquest and are hosted online with a good translation.
Movies with iconic acting roles that nearly went to a different actor would make a robust topic all on its own. For instance, Eric Stoltz actually shot some scenes as Marty in Back to the Future before he was fired. Supposedly he was too “methody” and serious for the director’s liking. But there must be a multiverse Earth in which Stoltz kept his job. I don’t think he’d be better than Michael J. Fox, but I’d like to see his take on it.
Christopher Walken was considered for Han Solo. Can you imagine how much weirder Star Wars would have been with Walken? I’d like to see that.
Tom Selleck was considered for Indiana Jones. In fact, I think he was their strong preference but he couldn’t get out of Magnum PI. Not only do I not think he’d be a better Han Solo, I think he would have sunk the franchise, there wouldn’t have been sequels, and Raiders of the Lost Ark would barely be remembered as a trivia question today. But I’d travel to altera-Earth to watch that version of ROTLA just out of morbid curiousity.
Let’s see
– The many decades of science fiction written by Stanley G. Weinbaum
– Mike Jittlov’s The Wizard of Speed and Time – the feature film he always talked about making (which was very different from the low-budget long film he was able to produce)
– The TV series Star Trek that was in the works around 1975, before Star Wars suddenly made it big and let them make ST:TMP
– Robert E. Howard’s Almuric as he would have completed it.
— Merian C. Cooper’s She in full color, as he’d intended (not the harryhausen colorized edition we now have) before the studio pulled the plug.
– H.G. wells’ “virtual reality” ride of The Time Machine
Probably for another thread, but it’s not quite that simple. You can have an infinite set of universes and yet it could still be incomplete. So it depends what multiverse / model.
Mark Twain wanted to travel to Japan, as a journalist, & write some of his witty travel letters as articles.
Japan was transitioning from Medieval to Industrial, & Mark had a keen eye, & a sardonic wit.
In our universe,m Twain got fired, & never went.
Hitler gets accepted into that fancy art school.
American Gothic aired in the proper sequence.
Starman 2. (WTF happened with the kid?)
Alex Ross, imagining what a modern-day music critic like himself might be writing if Mozart had lived to the age of 70:
Opera houses focus on the great works of Mozart’s maturity — The Tempest, Hamlet, the two-part Faust — but it would be a good thing if we occasionally heard that flawed yet lively work of his youth, Don Giovanni.
I’m not awaiting the artistic results of this with baited breath. Remember we’re not changing the multiverse, the universe where Hitler lives a quiet life as moderately successful commercial impressionist is there whether we see his paintings or not.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: much as I enjoy Gene Wilder’s performance as Wonka, I’d like to see what Spike Milligan (Dahl’s first choice) would have done with the role.
JMS has said more than once that he pre-built “trapdoors” in every episode/arc so that if something like that happened he already knew what to do. I think B5 was better with Sheridan and Lyta, but I missed Ivanova a lot.
I’d like a universe where TPTB at TNT didn’t screw with Crusade and it ran its planned 5-year course, and that Legend of the Rangers succeeded. Damnit.
That’s a good point. I might like to live in a universe where Hitler went to art school, but if I only have access to art from a universe where that happened, then fuck Adolph’s shitty water colors. Give me Glen Miller’s albums from the 1950s.
Oh wow, I had no idea. Yeah that is definitely on my multiverse Netflix playlist.
I’d like to see the later works of H. Beam Piper from the universe in which his publishers actually paid him on time, so he didn’t commit suicide thinking he was financially destitute. The few incomplete works he left behind show he had more to write.
Also, later seasons of Stargate:Universe. Most Stargate fans didn’t seem to like SG:U, but I liked the tonal shift, for the most part.
The universe where Adam Sandler bombed his SNL audition and just disappeared without leaving his blot on popular culture.
Jodorowsky’s Dune.
Kevin Smith’s Superman.
I’d like to read the ones he wrote after that van missed him completely.
As long as he finished his requiem before retiring 
.
Of those two, Walken would have likely done a better job, or at least been a lot more interesting. IMHO both roles require someone who can pull off being arrogant. Selleck is better at pulling off “I’m arrogant because I think I’m a better person.” Ford pulls off the more fitting for Solo and Indiana Jones style of “I’m arrogant not because I’m personally superior, but rather because I know better.”
I’d like to see a world where Frank Herbert retired after writing the original Dune.
-Peter Gabriel never leaves Genesis
-Gary Larson becomes a novelist
-Jan Hooks had at minimum a career on the level of Tina Fey’s
-Letterman gets the Tonight Show circa 1985 and quickly becomes absolutely miserable about it
-Prince’s Batman soundtrack is a double album collaboration with him as the Joker and Michael Jackson as Batman (supposedly this almost happened)
Ok, disclaimer first, I’m an atheist, but believe that a religious teacher called Jeshua existed at the beginning of the first century in Palestine, so it’d be interesting if he had lived a long life and most of all written his own stuff. “The Gospel According To Jesus” or “Jesus: My Life” would make for interesting reads.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I want to see the version of Very Bad Things where Sandler was cast instead of Jeremy Piven. (Almost happened, but he dropped out to make The Waterboy.)
I was thinking the other day how history might have been different if we didn’t have a moon.
Anyway, aside from Discworld, I want more Douglas Adams Hitch-Hiker’s Guide novels, and more Jim Henson-helmed fantasy movies, please.
Also the third GDT Hellboy film.