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Biography
Jack Burke Sowards (March 18, 1929 – July 8, 2007) was an American screenwriter who wrote the story and screenplay for the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the 1988 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Where Silence Has Lease". Sowards created the term Kobayashi Maru (a simulation test in The Wrath of Khan), naming it for his next-door neighbors in Hancock Park.
A native of Texarkana, Arkansas, Sowards had numerous writing credits which extended from episodes of The Bold Ones: The Lawyers in 1969 to an installment of B. L. Stryker in 1990. He was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for "The Invasion of Kevin Ireland", the September 26, 1971 episode of The Bold Ones: The Lawyers. He also received a Saturn Award nomination for his work on The Wrath of Khan and shared a Hugo Award nomination for it as well.
Sowards died in the Valley Village suburb of Los Angeles at the age of 78, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.