The stories contained herein deal, directly or indirectly, with manifest delusions. By representing the delusions they feature as delusions, they promote the delusion that delusion can eventually be undermined by the strong-minded, who will thus be enabled to avoid the "bad faith" of which some existentialist philosophers seem to have lived in mortal terror. Included are historical mysteries, fantasies, and science fiction. The tales in this collection "The Gardens of Tantalus," "The Lost Romance," "Lucifer's Comet," "The Miracle of Zunderburg," "The Cult of Selene," "Ice and Fire," "Self-Sacrifice," "To the Bad," "Riding the Tiger," "Curiouser and A Kitchen Sink Drama, by Carol Lewis," "Quality Control," and "Worse Than the Disease." Never before collected into book form.
Brian Michael Stableford was a British science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for a couple of very early works, and again for a few more recent works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.