John Rubens was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Mateo County, California, just south of the city. He is a graduate of the University of California at San Diego and Santa Clara University School of Law, and he learned French during his eighteen months of scholarship in Strasbourg, France. While practicing law in Hollywood, California, in 1995, John met his wife, Lucia, and they have made a home together there since 1998. Skyscraper Heavens began as a work of nonfiction told to the author while still an undergraduate at UC San Diego. Over the next thirty-five years, it was stored, rewritten, and is now presented as an antinovel. The work is set in Baug, a fictional Middle Eastern country inhabited by fictional characters who struggle coming to terms with a national revolution, its causes, and implications.
