b. 1940 · American science-fiction novelist, essayist & Star Trek teleplay writer
Norman Spinrad (born 15 September 1940) is an American science-fiction author, essayist and critic, known for novels that earned Hugo and Nebula nominations and the Prix Apollo. He was 27 when he wrote the teleplay for Star Trek’s “The Doomsday Machine” (1967), which he built from an unsold novelette and consciously modelled on Moby-Dick; the episode was nominated for a Hugo Award. He is the author of record for the real line — though, as he has said himself, some dialogue was altered during production, so which of the episode’s exact words are his is not something the record settles.