Blind Alley

By Malcolm Jameson

Although Jameson is best known for his military science fiction, particularly the Bullard of the Space Patrol series, he also wrote fantasy.  “Blind Alley” from Unknown Worlds, is one classic example—it was filmed as an episode of Rod Serling's original The Twilight Zone TV show, though retitled “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.” Includes an introduction by John Betancourt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Mar 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667616681

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

BLIND ALLEY, by Malcolm Jameson

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

Malcolm Jameson (1891–1945) was an American science fiction author who based much of his work on his background as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Jameson’s first published fiction appeared in Astounding in 1938. He was active in American pulp magazines for only 7 years, but he helped set the standard for quality during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He wrote not just for John W. Campbell’s magazines, Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown Worlds, but also for magazines like Startling Stories and Weird Tales. His writing career began when complications from throat cancer limited his activity.

His stories of Solar System exploration about Bullard of the Space Patrol were posthumously collected in 1951 as a fixup novel and won the Boys Clubs of America Award. Reviewing that collection, critics Boucher and McComas praised Bullard as the most successfully drawn series character in modern science fiction. P. Schuyler Miller wrote that Jameson drew on his own naval experience to give the stories a warm atmosphere of reality.

Jameson’s story Doubled and Redoubled may be the earliest work of fiction to feature a time loop. And his story Blind Alley from Unknown was filmed as an episode of The Twilight Zone (retitled Of Late I Think of Cliffordville).

Alfred Bester described meeting Jameson in about 1939 this way: Mort Weisinger introduced me to the informal luncheon gatherings of the working science fiction authors of the late thirties... Malcolm Jameson, author of navy-oriented space stories, was there, tall, gaunt, prematurely grey, speaking in slow, heavy tones. Now and then he brought along his pretty daughter, who turned everybody’s head.

Had he lived another 20 years, the shape of the science fiction field might have been significantly different, with Jameson’s name up there with Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and van Vogt.

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

BLIND ALLEY,

by Malcolm Jameson

INTRODUCTION

Malcolm Jameson (1891–1945) was an American science fiction author who based much of his work on his background as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Jameson’s first published fiction appeared in Astounding in 1938. He was active in American pulp magazines for only 7 years, but he helped set the standard for quality during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He wrote not just for John W. Campbell’s magazines, Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown Worlds, but also for magazines like Startling Stories and Weird Tales. His writing career began when complications from throat cancer limited his activity.

His stories of Solar System exploration about Bullard of the Space Patrol were posthumously collected in 1951 as a fixup novel and won the Boys Clubs of America Award. Reviewing that collection, critics Boucher and McComas praised Bullard as the most successfully drawn series character in modern science fiction. P. Schuyler Miller wrote that Jameson drew on his own naval experience to give the stories a warm atmosphere of reality.

Jameson’s story Doubled and Redoubled may be the earliest work of fiction to feature a time loop. And his story Blind Alley from Unknown was filmed as an episode of The Twilight Zone (retitled Of Late I Think of Cliffordville).

Had he lived another 20 years, the shape of the science fiction field might have been significantly different, with Jameson’s name up there with Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and van Vogt.

* * * *

Nothing was further from Mr. Feathersmith’s mind that dealings with streamlined, mid-twentieth-century witches or dickerings with the Devil. But something had to be done. The world was fast going to the bowwows, and he suffered from an overwhelming nostalgia for the days of his youth. His thoughts constantly turned to Cliffordsville and the good old days when men were men and God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. He hated modern women, the blatancy of the radio, That Man in the White House, the war—

Mr. Feathersmith did not feel well. His customary grouch—which was a byword throughout all the many properties of Pyramidal Enterprises, Inc.—had hit an all-time high. The