(As Washington Irving wrote in his heavily-heroificated biography of Christopher Columbus, “Care should be taken to vindicate great names from pernicious erudition.”)

By wildly extravagant heroification of Gene Roddenberry, all the untruths, all the false credit, all the betrayal and perfidious behavior he wallowed in, has been permitted to be flensed. …leaving only this glowing icon who wouldn’t tell a lie or hurt a fly. Yeah, and there are actually schmucks who think Adolf Hitler made the trains run on time.

So I tried to let it all pass, without comment most of the time. But thirty years is a piece of change. It is much longer to keep getting kicked in the ass than anyone should have to put up with.

So I let myself get talked into writing this book.

Yeah, yeah, I know: “You let yourself get talked into writing this book? Come on, Ellison! Who the hell’s supposed to believe that? Ain’t this the same world we went to bed in last night? Isn’t the reason for doing a Star Trek book of any kind—picayune biography, sharecropping derivative novel, moron quiz book, obsessional trivia book, adolescent episode guide—for the money? Follow the money? We’re not fools, Ellison! Yeah, we might swallow any crap the Paramount p.r. mill cares to throw out, and all preproduction inside-secrets desiderata, but we ain’t naive enough to believe you’re doing this book for any other reason than money.”

So okay, all right, all you little cynical television goobers, believe what the hell you choose. I say I was talked into doing this book, that left to my own devices I’d have spent my time on more worthwhile projects, and if I make money off this thing, well, since I’ve never seen more than a pittance from “The City on the Edge of Forever,” while every thug and studio putz and semiliterate bandwagon-jumper and merchandiser has grown fat as a maggot in a corpse off what I created, then you can chalk it up to achieving something not even close to balance in the Unjust Universe. But if you want the truth, here it is.

There is only one reason I’m doing this book:

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

“It is not at all to justify myself that I’ve been doing all this talking. …But no! That’s a lie! I precisely wanted to justify myself. I make this little note for myself, gentlemen. I don’t want to lie. I’ve given my word.”

—from NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

For thirty years I’ve had to listen to others shoot off their faces about how they saved “City.” How they rewrote this and trimmed that and suffered oh so awfully with the irresponsible Ellison.[1] For thirty years I’ve slapped back only when they got me too angry to lay back…or when they got within arm’s reach. And now, with Shatner’s pinheaded memoir, and that laughable “biography” by David Alexander that tried to make Roddenberry look like fuckin’ Prometheus…well…I let myself get talked into doing the original, unexpurgated, you-read-it-and-judge-for-yourself teleplay, with additional material, and alternate versions and various treatments…and this is my final word on the matter. If it makes money, that’s terrific: I deserve it. (A lot more than the creeps who’ve fed off my work for three decades.) And if it doesn’t…yeah, well, what are the odds all the brain-damaged Trekkies wanted to hear the truth anyhow?