American screenwriter (1929–2007) credited with the screenplay of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, for which he devised the Kobayashi Maru test.
Jack B. Sowards was an American television writer, born in 1929, with credits on series such as Bonanza and The Streets of San Francisco.
Producer Harve Bennett brought him in to write Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). Sowards has the screenplay credit and shares the story credit with Bennett. His drafts introduced the Kobayashi Maru no-win scenario and its name, and established the death of Spock as the heart of the story; director Nicholas Meyer carried out the final, uncredited rewrite.
Sowards later wrote the teleplay of the Next Generation episode Where Silence Has Lease (1988), in which the Enterprise-D is trapped in a void by the entity Nagilum. He died in 2007.