John Scalzi will appear as part of the Iowa City Book Festival at 4 p.m. Saturday at 136 S. Dubuque St., the former Wedge space. He will promote his new science-fiction book, The End of All Things.

This is the sixth entry in the Hugo-winning author’s “Old Man’s War” series, picking up directly following the events of Part 5, The Human Division.

The End of All Things, though only recently published in a compiled format, was originally released as four separate e-books. One 25,000-word section was published each week in June.

The previous book had a similar release, comprising 13 shorter entries that were later collected in a single text. This has been a sort of experiment for Scalzi and his editors. It has offered them a chance to explore other avenues of media consumption and also gave Scalzi a chance to stretch himself.

“I wrote each of the four parts from a different first-person point of view, something that a novel in usual format wouldn’t be able to do,” he said. “I got to spend quality time with four different characters.”

Though this format produced sales numbers relatively consistent with what was expected based on previous entries, Scalzi felt that such a method of publishing was a perk of the digital landscape.

“In today’s era of publishing, there’s much more flexibility for writers,” he said. “You don’t have to write at the length that looks good on a bookshelf. Some stories work better at 30,000 words than 90,000, and the current environment lets those stories be told.”

— by Isaac Hamlet