YOUNGSTOWN — More than 100 people filled the DeBartolo Hall Auditorium on the Youngstown State University campus Thursday evening to hear a New York Times bestselling author talk about science fiction in the new millennium.

John Scalzi is a Hugo Award-winning writer whose novels have topped the charts and whose short stories have been adapted for the Netflix series “Love, Death & Robots,” among many other accolades.

The evening’s talk, which covered the evolution of science fiction since 2005, began with Scalzi asking the audience to wave so he could take a picture of them with his phone for social media.

Scalzi then opened with an anecdote about the onion rings at Youngstown’s Bistro 1907. Scalzi and his faculty hosts had dinner that evening at the restaurant on the ground floor of the renovated DoubleTree by Hilton on Federal Street in Youngstown.

“They gave me an onion ring the size of a hubcap,” Scalzi said. “And I was not prepared for that. When they brought it out, I thought, ‘Wow, is this an onion doughnut loaf?'” The crowd laughed. “It was delicious,” Scalzi said. “It was also the size of my head.”

Impressed with Youngstown’s cuisine, Scalzi turned the discussion to the diversification of science fiction.

In the past, science fiction writers generally were white men, Scalzi said, but that has changed. In the 21st century, editors and writers have emerged from multiple cultural demographics.

Part of this change, he continued, includes the rise of digital self-publishing services and more publishing houses willing to publish diverse voices.

Digital publishing also has affected how people write, particularly in terms of length.

In the 1950s, when books were frequently found in corner drug stores, publishers liked shorter books that could fit on revolving metal racks, he said.

With the rise of chain books stores, management wanted printed books in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 words because they felt the spines of books of that length “looked good” on their shelves, Scalzi said.

Now that digital book technology is the prominent form of publishing, length is no longer a consideration, Scalzi said. Volumes can now be as long or as short as they need to be to make their stories work.

Science fiction also has evolved from a niche market thanks to the success of stories such as “Game of Thrones.”

“We are now seeing science fiction and fantasy becoming mainstream,” Scalzi said. “They are no longer just the thing that your nerd cousin read. Now your cool cousin, the one that’s on Tik-Tok all the time, is there holding up (science fiction author) Patricia Yarrow’s book and telling all her friends how much she loved this book.”

Scalzi himself is a publishing force. His most famous works include “Old Man’s War” in which elderly brains are transferred to young bodies to create smarter soldiers; “Red Shirts” about crewmen on “Star Trek” who always wear uniforms and invariably die; and “The Kaiju Preservation Society” about a parallel earth populated by giant monsters.

The talk ended with a question-and-answer session in which Scalzi took questions from the audience.

One member of the audience asked Scalzi where he got the idea for his 2014 book “Lock In.”

“In 2014,” Scalzi said, “a pandemic sounded like a good idea for a book.” The audience laughed, understanding the irony of a novel based on a worldwide pandemic published only six years before the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak.

Another audience member asked Scalzi how he overcame “writer’s block.”

“I look at my bills,” Scalzi quipped.

Scalzi’s advice to young writers he summed up in one word: “Patience,” he said.

A book-signing followed in the lobby.

In addition to the Hugo Award, Scalzi has won the John Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Locus Award, and the Robert Heinlein Award.

Scalzi was brought to YSU with a grant from the Grace Ruth Endowed Professorship, currently held by Laura Beadling, a professor of English at YSU.

The endowment is a gift from the Robert Reeder family. Reeder is an alumnus of YSU now practicing law in New York City.

“The Reeder family is incredibly generous in helping us bring a writer of Scalzi’s stature to campus,” Beadling said. “Evenings like this are what humanities education is all about, advice and insight from a top writer for students and the community.”

The talk also had a connection to the museum currently in the planning stages in Warren.

“As part of an effort to build a science fiction and fantasy museum in Warren, we’ve been doing our best to connect to fantasy and sci-fi authors, of course in Ohio but also across the nation,” Meghan Reed, executive director of Trumbull County Historical Society, said. “And when we heard that Scalzi was going to be the keynote tonight, we couldn’t help but jump on board.”

For Scalzi, a resident of Columbus, the evening also was a personal achievement.

“This is my very first time in Youngstown,” Scalzi said. “I’ve lived in Ohio for 23 years and I never managed to get down to Youngstown, so a part of this evening is so I can knock that off my Ohio bucket list.”