The stories had all previously been published in various anthologies and magazines; they may be described, somewhat interchangeably, as science fiction, fantasy literature, metafiction and macabre.

The material in the collection may be divided into two types: the first, namely "An Infinite Summer" and "Palely Loitering" are more straightforward works of science fiction involving time travel, while the other three are early parts of Priest's "Dream Archipelago" sequence, described by John Clute as "intensify[ing] the sense that Priest's landscapes had now become forms of expression of the psyche, and are of intense interest for the dream-like convolutions of psychic terrain so displayed.

"[1] Priest would later revisit the setting at length in novels such as The Affirmation and, in 1999, these early stories would be revised and reassembled with other material as The Dream Archipelago.

He is now disinherited and poor; he learns that freezing may "erode" after minutes or years; and he finds what work he can in the vicinity so that he may visit Sarah, in her radiant immobility, every day.

The freezers have watched Thomas; when Sarah awakes, blissful but baffled by the bombing, they restore their tableau, presumably so that the lovers will wake again in a kinder future.

"[4] "Palely Loitering" was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the January 1979 issue; Priest reaped the cover illustration by Ron Walotsky.

[6] The title is harvested from the ballad La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats; the relevant lines run: 1 O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,2 Alone and palely loitering?.

"[8] "The Negation" was originally published in Anticipations, a 1978 anthology edited by Priest; it has been collected here in An Infinite Summer and in his The Dream Archipelago (1999).

In French translation, it has been anthologized in Le livre d'or de la Science-Fiction: Christopher Priest (1980) and L'Archipel du Rêve (1981).

"[4] Dik, an eighteen-year-old policeman, looks eagerly forward to the visit of novelist Moylita Kaine, author of The Affirmation (the title of Priest's own 1981 metafictional novel).