You Never Can Tell is an interweaving of timeless plots that merit a fresh retelling—and the reader is the benefactor of Mike Sharpe's spirited reinventions. The companion work, Smog, is a dystopian novella in which the presumably knowledgeable, affluent members of society are blind to all that is happening around them. Preoccupied with their own concerns, they fail to heed the warning signs as disaster engulfs the land.