Some years after receiving the Writers Guild award, Ellison was in a bar when he ran into writer Don Ingalls. “Fandango,” a script Ingalls wrote for Gunsmoke, was one of the four other contenders that lost out to Ellison’s script. Ingalls had also written for Star Trek, and they discussed not only the series but Ellison’s award-winning script. After a few drinks Harlan boasted that, before submitting his own final draft for consideration, he had “polished it up a little bit to make it even better.” To this day, Ingalls remains amused by his friend Ellison’s award-winning stratagem.

HERB: So when I finally realized that Harlan was a sorcerer’s reincarnation, it answered that burning question: “Why did he do what he did at the Awards dinner?”

Easy. The Wizard made him do it.

On the Edge of Forever: Waiting for Harlan 289

I couldn’t believe what I saw there. I couldn’t believe that at no time in the preceding few years, of all the times we spoke, neither Herb nor Bobby thought to ask me about the validity of what Don Ingalls had told them. Not once.

Now, anyone who knows me at all…anyone who has read my books and followed my essays…anyone who is in my company for more than an hour…knows what’s wrong with that Ingalls anecdote.

What’s wrong is that I don’t drink.

I have never drunk.

Can’t stand the taste of alcohol, it makes me sick. As a consequence, I have no tolerance for alcohol of any kind. I do not drink beer, wine, hard liquor. I also don’t use drugs, but that’s another matter.

I’ve even written at length about this. Look up a piece I wrote about working in a carnival when I was thirteen years old. It’s in one of my books. It’s titled “Gopher in the Gilly.”

What I’m saying here, is that anyone who knows anything at all about me knows that I don’t drink.

Consequently, I don’t go into bars.

I don’t think I’ve been in a dozen bars in my whole life, even accompanying friends or buddies throughout my young adulthood.

And I sure as hell have never been drunk.

I barely knew Don Ingalls. He wrote some segments of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea when I was working at 20th Century Fox on the same series, and I guess I’ve run into him a few times over the years; but we are not close friends, just casual acquaintances; and I sure as hell never went drinking with him in a bar somewhere.