William R. Forstchen

In March 2009, Dr. Forstchen's novel, One Second After (Tor/Forge/St. Martin's books) was published and quickly reached the New York Times best seller list; it was on the list for twelve weeks. The sequel, One Year After, was released on September 15, 2015. The concluding work of the trilogy, The Final Day, was released January 4, 2017. All three of the books in what is now called The John Matherson Series achieved NYT best seller status. The book has been translated and printed in over a dozen countries.

Forstchen's novel Pillar to the Sky (2014) is an exploration of the concept of a Space Elevator. The tower would rise from the equator to geostationary orbit and beyond in order to revolutionize space transportation in the 21st century. Forstchen’s thesis is that the building of such a permanent transportation system to high earth orbit would reignite America’s economic and technological prominence in the 21st century. He promoted the idea that such a tower could be used to "hot wire” limitless non-polluting energy from solar panels deployed in space and free peoples on earth from dependence on greenhouse gas-emitting energy production.

Forstchen has also self-published two novellas. Day of Wrath (2014) is about an ISIS-inspired attack on United States public schools. Twin Flame (2017), co-authored with friend and author Nora D'Ecclesis, is a "biographical novella". He explores meeting, courting and marrying his wife Robin.

Forstchen based his research for One Second After on the 2004 bipartisan Congressional study of the potential threat to the continental United States from an EMP attack: Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. Drawing on this and other government and private studies, Forstchen explores by fiction what might happen in a "typical" American town in the wake of an attack on the United States with electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. Forstchen has been invited to make presentations regarding the threat of EMP before members of Congress, and at STRATCOM, Sandia Labs, and NASA.

William R. Forstchen (born October 11, 1950) is an American historian and author who began publishing in 1978 as a contributor to Boys' Life. He is a Professor of History and Faculty Fellow at Montreat College, in Montreat, North Carolina. He received his doctorate from Purdue University, studying under the historian Professor Gunther E. Rothenberg, with specializations in Military History, the American Civil War, and the History of Technology.

Forstchen is the author of nearly fifty books, including the award-winning We Look Like Men of War, a young adult novel about an African-American regiment that fought at the Battle of the Crater. It is based on material he researched and developed for his doctoral dissertation, The 28th USCTs: Indiana's African-Americans go to War, 1863–1865.