Fans of '50s nostalgia and B-movie kitsch will remember The Amazing Criswell, Mae West's personal psychic and a mainstay of Ed Wood's crowd, uttering such memorable Wood lines as "And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future." Criswell was famous for making wild predictions of future disasters that never happened. Denver has not been struck by a ray from space that turns all metal to rubber, nor did the world end 11 years ago. On the other hand, Criswell did predict JFK's assassination to the month, which is just spooky. Charlatan or no, however, Criswell was a wonderfully eccentric character of the kind you don't see so much anymore. It's a sad fact of our modern times—they just don't grow psychics like they used to. I'm no Criswell (damn the luck!) but this week's column is all about news from the future...

BSC? OMG!: If you want to make a solid living as a writer, and I mean solid, consider starting a series for kids and young adults. We can't seem to get away from Stephenie Meyer and her sparkly vampires, but the hands-down ruler of the publishing universe remains R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps series who has, officially, moved more units than Stephen King. After years off the market, Scholastic revived Goosebumps in 2008 and is now about to bring back another perennial favorite, Ann M. Martin's The Baby-Sitters Club, in the wake of overwhelming demand from grownup girls who remember the series fondly and have expressed an interest in passing it on to their daughters. Martin is currently updating the books and has written a prequel to serve as a comprehensive introduction to the characters. Expect the revamped series to sell huge.

They Beat Dead Horses, Don't They?: A couple of months ago I recommended the funny and ass-kicking Jane Austen pastiche Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (soon to be a major motion picture with Natalie Portman) but with the caveat that, good as it was, it was part of an annoying trend by modern authors to update and/or sequelize classic books in the royalty-free public domain. The publisher of PPZ, Quirk Publishing, followed that surprise hit with Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Not as funny, but okay. Now Quirk has announced the summer release of Android Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters, a steampunk version of the old romantic workhorse with gears and rivets and death-dealing cyborgs. Readers of this column know that a) I'm a fan of the steampunk and b) I'm all for anything that sells books, but still, there's something distasteful about going back to this well for a third time. PPZ was a pleasant surprise out of left field, but this just seems kind of tedious.

Speaking of Going Back to the Well: I've said it before, I'll say it again: don't self-publish your novel. If it's good enough to read, it's good enough to sell to a publisher. After all, there's a book out there called Confessions of a Werewolf Supermodel—if you can write something better than that, you're in like Flynn. If you need further incentive, then let James Lewis be your cautionary tale. Lewis was the prime suspect in the infamous Tylenol poisoning case in the 1980s, which claimed several lives in the Chicago area and sparked a national panic. Though Lewis was never indicted, there is something raised-eyebrow-worthy about his new novel Poison!: The Doctor's Dilemma, which follows a psychic psychologist detective on the hunt for a mysterious mad poisoner and a criminal mastermind who has discovered how to create earthquakes and plans to destroy... Chicago. Is this Lewis thumbing his nose at the system? It's not my place to say—after all, in my first column I defended OJ's right to publish whatever he likes—but the monumental tastelessness of this is irrefutable.

Also forthcoming from the depths (snicker) of the vanity presses is Malcolm J. Brenner's instant classic of interspecies romance Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover. Brenner, a journalist and photographer, has been circulating parts of this book since the 1970s, notably in Penthouse and online, but here he is marketing the finished product, an autobiographical novel about a man whose admiration for a dolphin evolves into romantic and finally sexual relations. Brenner insists that his own experiences with a dolphin named Ruby, back in his college days, were purely consensual, that Ruby actively returned his affections and communicated with him telepathically—that, in fact, man and dolphin seduced each other. For many years there has been a movement insisting that the superior intelligence of cetaceans warrants granting them certain rights beyond those usually demanded for animals, and there is certainly a valid argument to be made for that. I'm just not convinced that this is quite what they mean.

With Sincere Apologies: I'm deeply sorry to my friends at The Georgia Review for having to follow a suspected poisoner and a bestiality advocate, but here is their announcement: "Poet Kevin Prufer will read from his work beginning at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 28 at Ciné, 234 West Hancock Ave. in downtown Athens. The reading is free and open to the public and is sponsored by The Georgia Review and the Georgia Poetry Circuit, a 25-year-old consortium of colleges and universities that sponsors tours of three poets around the state annually. Local writer Michael Tod Edgerton will open for Prufer. The Georgia Review will also debut its Winter 2009 issue, which includes a long section of writings by and about the award-winning Albert Goldbarth as well as artwork from Athens-based photographer Michael J. Marshall."

As I said, I'm no Criswell, but I predict this'll be good.

John G. Nettles