"Given the choice between a cold truth and a desirable lie, which would any person choose who is not totally wedded to rational reality." So writes Isaac Asimov in the Introduction to Tales of the Occult. Although he is one of the world's greatest proponents of rationalism, Asimov admits that all those who are willing to suspend disbelief will be captivated by this collection of the best of the occult genre.
Included in this volume are the most unnerving work of H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling and many others. Ranging from the curious to the macabre, the stories explore such topics as clairvoyance, precognition, devil worship, séances, exorcism and the "evil eye". Isaac Asimov has added an Afterword to each story, tracing its connection to a deep-rooted occult belief that still pervades our culture.
Edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, Tales of the Occult also provides a reading list of other stories about each of the twenty-two subjects represented.
Isaac Asimov is the world's premiere popularizer of science and has written hundres of books and articles on topics ranging across the sprectrum of human thought. Martin H. Greenberg is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay and the editor or coeditor of more than one hundred anthologies of scioence fiction, fantasy and mystery. Charles G. Waugh has edited scores of anthologies and reference works and is professor of communications and psychology at the University of Maine at Augusta.