Over the course of his career, Jack Cady won the Bram Stoker Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, a special award from the International Horror Guild, the Atlantic Monthly First Award, the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction, the National Library Anthology Award, and the Washington State Governor's Award. Cady's keen and profound insight into the collective psyche of the modern world — both from a narrative standpoint and from a critical cultural analysis — are captured in this collection.

Phantoms includes his scathing critique of wartime politics and how these national policies are indelibly tied to the simple act of paying taxes (“Dear Friends”), to an anguished reaction to a world caught on the cusp of change during the 1970s (“Birds”), to a modern parable of the frustrating nature of Satan's job (“The Parable of Satan's Adversary”), to a romp through science experiments gone awry (“The Twenty-Pound Canary”). The world is filled with ghosts, but to Jack Cady, these phantoms are vital aspects of who we are. His stories never lose sight of the marvelous mystery of the fantastic.