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To be frank I've never regarded lightning bolt as being in any way inferior to fireball; both have their uses. Fireball can hit a larger number of targets but lightning bolt can be aimed more precisely if you want to avoid hitting party members (which you do).
But if you really find fireball that much better than lightning bolt, there was a great little optional rule presented in an issue of Dragon magazine (can't remember which). Instead of centering your spread and burst spells on a corner, you pick a target square, then roll a d4 to randomly determine which corner the spell emanates from. That random variable makes spread and burst spells a little less reliable and nicely reduces the kind of "precision bombing" effects we often get with fireball spells.