This is another story about war, and a story about morality. Alternate history is usually an intellectual exercise in what would follow from a different event. ‘The Lucky Strike’ instead looks at the immediate aftermath of the different event, asking how different what follows might be. As readers, we know what happened historically in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But what if a different pilot is flying the plane? We might hope that Captain January will break the straitjacket of history as we know it to be, but can he?

First published in Universe 14 in 1984. Collected in The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, 2010