James L. Cambias is a game designer and science fiction writer. He was raised in New Orleans and educated at the University of Chicago; he now lives in western Massachusetts. He started writing roleplaying games in 1990, but only published his first science fiction in 2000 with a pair of short stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His work has also appeared in Shimmer, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, Nature, and anthologies such as Odder Jobs (Dark Horse Books, 2004), All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (Wheatland Press, 2004), and Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004). His stories include "The Ocean of the Blind" (F&SF, April 2004; also collected in Year's Best Science Fiction, 2005; preliminary Nebula award nominee for 2005); "The Eckener Alternative," (All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, collected in Year's Best SF 5, 2005); and "Balancing Accounts" (F&SF, February 2008; collected in both the Dozois and Horton "Year's Best" anthologies, and the audio anthology We, Robots). His most recent stories are "Makeover" (Nature, July 2009), "The Wolf and the Schoolmaster" (Shimmer, December 2009), and "How Seosiris Lost the Favor of the King" (F&SF, forthcoming).

Wearing his game-designer hat Mr. Cambias has written a dozen roleplaying game supplements for Steve Jackson Games and HERO games. He is a founding partner in Zygote Games, a company specializing in science and nature based card games. In 2001 he was a finalist for the Campbell Award, and in the same year became a member of the Cambridge Science Fiction Writers' workshop, where he has clung with limpet-like tenacity.

He finds it odd to refer to himself in the third person.