John J. Miller was born in 1954 in central New York. He started reading the works of Edgar Rice Burrows in his childhood and soon became a dedicated fan of science fiction and comic books. Early attempts at publishing science fiction stories of his own were met with a succession of failures. John attended SUNY and graduated in 1976 with a B.A. in anthropology. He then moved to Albuquerque to pursue a graduate degree in archaeology at the University of New Mexico.