For Want of a Nail: Difference between revisions

** Also by Asimov (he liked this trope) is ''[[Spell My Name with an "S"]]'', where two aliens bet as to whether they could avert a nuclear war on Earth with a minor stimulus. Sure enough, getting one person to change how they spell their name works.

*** Context on that last (as it sounds utterly crack fic-ish without some): a sudden desire by a scientist applying for a security-cleared job in nuclear weapons research to spell his name differently makes the US government wonder what he's trying to hide, so they start searching their records for people with the same name as their theory is that he's trying to hide his being related to someone iffy. Their name-search turns up no relatives, but does turn up a Soviet physicist with the same name who has published an obscure theory. The Atomic Energy Commission then realizes that an applied corollary of that theory might possibly allow the Russians to create a workable defense vs. nuclear attack if they ever sufficiently investigate the possibility, at which point the Russians could nuclear first-strike the US with impunity. This panics the US government into sponsoring a crash research project that they would otherwise have ignored and actually inventing a workable defense ''first'', which motivates the Soviets to actually follow up on that line of research themselves, at which point the threat of nuclear war is forever abolished from the planet.

*** In a different book, Rincewind remarks that killing your own grandfather is the only thing that really appeals to him in this whole time travel business.

*** Ridcully then goes on to point out to Ponder that stepping on insects is fine, since history-as-they-know-it either isn't affected by the deaths, or actively requires them.

{{quote|'''Ridcully:''' I suppose we'd have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing ...

'''Granny:''' What about the fire?

'''Ridcully:''' What fire?

'''Granny:''' Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both. }}

*** Might be a double subversion as the war was ''meant'' to happen, since that was how history of supposed to go. Lu Tze, however, [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|decided differently]]...

* Two ''[[Nightside]]'' novels by [[Simon R. Green]] steadily establish that {{spoiler|the main character, John Taylor,}} is responsible for ''everything'' that has ever gone wrong in the [[Nightside]], dating back to its very creation.

* ''[[To Say Nothing of the Dog]]'' discusses the trope quite a bit. It has an interesting scenario involving the destruction of Coventry Cathedral. Because of cracking the Enigma Code, British intelligence officials knew in advance that it would be bombed. The novel imagines a scenario where the [[MacGuffin]], a piece of hideous Victorian architecture, disappears during the air raid and an old busybody {{spoiler|correctly}} deduces it was stolen just before the air raid by someone with prior knowledge of the raid, {{spoiler|though she is wrong about who and why}}, and sends a letter about this oddity to the newspaper. When Nazi intelligence officials come across this letter, they deduce {{spoiler|again correctly, albeit for the wrong reason}} that their code has been broken and adopt a new one which the Allies can't crack, and thus win [[World War II]]. The removal of the [[MacGuffin]] means that 'time' has to 'fix' things by eliminating the old busybody. The method? Send the heroes back in time to ensure she is happily married and nowhere near Coventry Cathedral.