/ – screech – / a printing press grinds to a halt / – click, slam – / a flip cellphone is opened then shut / it is the arrival of a new kind of book … / paperbacks, hardcovers, classics, goodbye … / – thud – / the publishing industry falls to the floor / – sobbing – / her children are grotesque monsters / claws like werewolves and syntax of drug-addled simians … /

If you haven’t heard of cellphone novels, ask your teenage daughter about it. The phenomenon, rampant across Asia and taking hold in the West too (www.textnovel.com), has taken the art of text messaging – and the malleability of the written word – to another level.

The craze looks about ready to spawn a new industry. Shanda, the online gaming giant that controls much of online and cell phone literature, has just bought 51 percent of Hurray Holdings, a major wireless company that creates ringtones, wallpaper and apparently, novels. What the –? Who are all these millions of people that think turning SMS messages into books is a good idea? / – thud – / a jaw drops in disbelief … /

Back in the safe, sunny world of the printed page, there’s plenty of fresh (and grammatically sound) reading to be had this month. For fans of our back page, Kaiser Kuo is launching a collection of his “Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” columns on July 2 (RSVP details here). Bill Porter, aka Red Pine, is coming to talk about Zen Buddhism (Jul 7), Zachary Mexico will be telling us what happens when Chinese mobsters get hopped up on Ketamine (hint: people get shot) and Rachel DeWoskin, the original Foreign Babe in Beijing, will be here too (Jul 22).

If you’re looking to rumble, the battle for supremacy between Beijing and Shanghai will manifest as Tales of Old Peking and Tales of Old Shanghai face off on July 15. Come on, as if Shanghai even has a chance.

Although they did just hold the Shanghai Film Festival, which recently premiered Wheat, directed by He Ping and starring the very sexy Fan Bingbing. Okay / – grumble grumble – / Shanghai’s got something on us. Two somethings, actually, if you count Yao Ming, who recently voiced a cartoon character in The Magic Aster. If that doesn’t excite your kids, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is coming out on July 15 – that ought to get their hippogriffs flapping.

On local screens across town, it appears promoters have been bitten by a burst of the macabre. Let’s see, we’ve got a documentary that filmed 19 people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, another on cannibalism, another called The Suicide Tourist – and those are just the documentaries. Then Natural Born Killers, Aliens, Edward Scissorhands and an Italian flick about knocking up a 12-year-old deaf-mute rounds out the fiction. Hmm. Enjoy.