JAMES TAM was born in Hong Kong. He lived and studied in Canada in the 70s and returned to Hong Kong in the mid-80s to work as an environmental engineer. He started his own environmental engineering practice and additionally a software company. The latter won the premier IT Excellence Award and the HK Industry Award in 1996. In 2008, Tam realised his long-term plan to leave business before too late, and sat down to write. He now writes fiction and non-fiction, sometimes in English, sometimes in Chinese. His short stories and occasional poems have received honorary mentions in competitions and appeared in anthologies. Man’s Last Song, Tam’s first full-length novel, was a finalist for the International Proverse Prize 2011, and won a supplementary award. As a scientific realist often mistaken for a morbid cynic, he sees abundant evidence that 21st Century Homo Sapiens is a delusional and self-endangered species. Nevertheless, he remains irrationally optimistic, happily married, with two lovely daughters.