Just finished reading almost all of WW2-era author
Malcolm Jameson's body of work, most of which can be conveniently found over
here. There's a few titles listed there without actual text that still elude me, but I've read a number of other pieces (mostly articles on military technologies and tactics rather than fiction stories, all in Amazing) that don't appear on that listing, so I'm going to call it a day on searching and just keep an eye out for more as I gradually sweep through early pulps throughout the rest of this year.
His very brief writing career ranged from 1940 to 1946, with a few stories published posthumously. He died in April 1945, presumably from throat cancer, complications from which lead him to start writing in the first place as his other activities were curtailed. This means he missed the end of WW2, which is exceptionally bad timing for a US Navy officer who'd done a good deal to modernize naval gunnery during his career. He also passed away before the first nuclear bomb test and thereby didn't have to see his 1943 "The Giant Atom" (an early story about nuclear experiments gone badly awry) story turn out to be rather distressingly inaccurate science-wise. If he's well-known for anything these days it's probably for "Blind Alley" which was adapted for the Twilight Zone episode
"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" - which itself is perhaps most notable for featuring a young Julie Newmar as "Miss Devlin" aka the Devil Herself, complete with horns.
My first encounter with Jameson was a collected edition of most of the Bullard of the Space Patrol series of short stories (the 1951 World Junior Library edition) which was still loitering in my school library when I reached 7th grade in 1979. While later categorized as juvenile fiction, the series wasn't written to be one. Jameson's experiences in the navy show through the scifi elements, and Amazing was marketed for GIs and adults more than children. The setting is typical of many older sf stories, some dating back into the Victorian era, ie a crowded solar system full of inhabited worlds with mostly human-like natives and a united and rather colonialist Earth as the most powerful and advanced of all the worlds. No interstellar travel, no really strange aliens, and a gleeful disregard for hard (or even soft) science when it would get in the way. There's an implied series of interstellar conflicts in the background of most stories, but very few actual combat scenes, and those all very brief and one-sided. Some stories have none at all, despite all of them centering on either Bullard as captain of the Star-class cruiser Pollux or on another character who's an officer on a less-famous vessel. Most of the series (and a lot of the appeal in general) comes from tongue-in-cheek dealings with vain officers, petty bureaucrats, red tape in general and other frustrations familiar to a military man. There are some thematic similarities to Keith Laumer's Retief stories, and a fair bit of dry humor that makes them more than just another pulp space opera.
There's effectively nothing we'd call character growth, no female characters whatsoever, and very little in the way of even character descriptions (Bullard doesn't even have a first name), which might actually help inclusivity from a modern POV. Yeah, he probably just assumed everyone was white, but feel free to picture most characters however you like, because Jameson mostly isn't going to tell you about them. Despite those (rather common) limitations of early pulp scifi tales, there is a chronological through line between stories where Bullard gradually rises in fame and rank, eventually being promoted to a rather different type of bureaucrat than the ones he contends with earlier in his career.
Taking a quick look at the individual stories in order, "Admiral's Inspection" and "White Mutiny" are two very different takes on the farcical number of regulations militaries tend to accumulate over time, with the second also being a biting condemnation of commanders who put looking good on paper ahead of actual ship performance in and out of combat. "Blockade Runner" is a more serious story about a desperate undercover mission to smuggle fuel to Earth that goes badly awry until Bullard comes up with a clever plan that sets things aright. "Slacker's Paradise" (which was left out of the reprint collection ,so I only read it recently) is one of three stories where Bullard is largely a background character, and one of two where he's forced to send a junior officer off on a rather shameful mission he'd prefer to do himself. The plot (which seems outrageous if you don't know your European naval history) is based on a real event and has a pretty amusing plot twist that shines a very critical light on inept, defeatist politicians - very much like many Retief stories.
"Devil's Powder" also didn't make it into the collection, most likely because it revolves quite explicitly around drug smuggling throughout the fleet and right on the Pollux herself. Probably the weakest of the whole series, possibly because Jameson didn't have much first hand experience with the subject the way he did with bureaucrats, politicians, and martinets. "Bullard Reflects" is a somewhat implausible adventure involving a temporary defeat by some space pirates, followed by a crushing reversal thanks to a rather lucky find and Pollux's "dazzle dart" sports team being so good they can parry lightspeed energy weapons. The title is also a horrendous play on words, which also wraps up the story. Not actually bad, but not great either. "Brimstone Bill" is a real kicker that I don't want to spoil, but it shows the sleazier side of the setting, even admitting that spacers stuck in port might be tempted by drink, gambling and ladies of the night. It combines political corruption, a clever Bullard scheme, and surprisingly decent treatment of someone of someone who's clearly a criminal by any standard. "Written for kids" my butt. This was for the troops.
The last two published stories sideline Bullard and focus on lower ranking officers. In "Bureaucrat" (one of my favorites) the son of one of his old cronies comes to Bullard for help getting out of his cushy do-nothing assignment arranged by his wealthy mother so he do something meaningful in the current war. As Bullard regretfully explains, his position as Grand Admiral has him so wrapped up in red tape he can't take a personal interest in things, and tells the kid everyone's just a cog in the machine and let the machine run as it will - but of course this is Bullard, and he knows how to make things happen without seeming to do a thing. This is noteworthy for being the only story with on-page space combat. Also, "katatron" is an excellent name for a starship weapon, and I've been using it in gaming for decades.
"Orders" was published posthumously from papers found after Jameson died, and may never have been submitted - possibly because it shares some elements with "Slacker's Paradise" although it's arguably a better story. It might be out of chronological sequence - possibly meant to be before the "Bureaucrat" although I could see it going either way - and again has Bullard forced to send out a subordinate (another son of another old crewmate) on a truly stupid mission by an idiotic politician. Thankfully Bullard has some instructions for the kid, and he does a good job carrying them out. It's a fun (and very short) read, and noteworthy for being impossibly prophetic about how rapidly the US downsized its military forces post-WW2, as well as criticizing that haste when other nations were retaining and expanding their forces instead. The author died in April 1945, well before the end of the war in 1945 was anything like a sure thing. If we'd had to launch Operation Downfall we'd have been fighting well into '46 or '47, and possibly even longer.
There's also a "non-canon" tenth Bullard story, the very short "Pig Trap" he wrote for Amazing's comedic Probability Zero feature. It's an absurdist "barroom brag session" tale, but mildly amusing.
If anyone actually got through all that and wants a non-Bullard suggestion or two, I'd recommend Pride (a rather effective story about an aging sentient robot), Vengeance In Her Bones (a Weird WW2 story about a cargo ship that's got a vendetta going against the German u-boat fleet), Train For Flushing (a low-key but creepy tale about what happens when a Dutchman takes to the railways), and the linked short stories Alien Envoy and Brains For Bricks (which show that he could convincingly write some very alien aliens when he wanted to, from physiology and technology to psychology and social structure).
While I didn't enjoy them as much, fans of Piper's Paratime or Turtledove's Crosstime stories might also like Jameson's Anachron trilogy of stories, which have some similar themes but predate them by a fair margin.
