This book gathers 25 essays originally presented at the Twelfth Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Its animating focus is the politics of fantasy, considered both as a formal genre and a mode of apprehension. The opening essay, by Brian Attebery, sets the agenda for the book in its forthright rebuttal of fantasy's critics, who see it as either politically naive or even pernicious: rather, Attebery argues, fantasy is a radical mode of perception that contests every form of political orthodoxy.

The book is divided into six large sections. The first broadly addresses the social politics of fantasy, with three essays showing how fantastic literature undermines the assumptions of realism, including such official forms as Socialist Realism. The second section, on technique, focuses on the formal strategies of fantastic texts, with three essays analyzing collage and two the grotesque. Part three offers six perspectives on fantasy's implications for issues of race and gender. Parts four and five, on nature and religion, provide eight views of how fantasy affects apprehension of the natural and the supernatural. Finally, the sixth section contains three essays assessing the politics of intertextuality.