TAGGING THE MOON

Ten tales, nine from 1993–98 and one original, from the author of Darker Angels (1998), etc. Three are based overtly on familiar fairy tales: “Gingerbread” features Hansel and Gretel as abused children who fall into the clutches of a witch who’s also a Hollywood madam. Rumpelstiltskin returns as “Dr. Rumpole,” a Nazi war criminal and screenwriter of genius, who ends up an unwitting slave in a canny operator's basement; and in “Mr. Death's Blue-Eyed Boy,” the Pied Piper of Hamelin shows up, demanding payment for his services—plus accumulated interest. Elsewhere, vampires are on the side of the angels; when Jesus returns to Earth, the devil succeeds at the third attempt in corrupting Him—but, here, the devil’s the good guy; King Arthur mixes it up with mythology, movies, and a serial killer; in the title piece, a “tagger” (a graffiti artist) yearns to leave his tag on the Moon, and, helped by like-minded aliens, succeeds; an ancient Mexican vampire wakes to find that the entire world is run by vampires; a violent father turns his “stubborn” son into a zombie; and a necrophiliac discovers his heart's desire in a vault full of cryogenically preserved heads.

Creepy, nasty, and often disquieting: Somtow revels in aspects of the human psyche that most of us would rather not encounter.