ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the term 'fantastic' loosely to categorise a range of non-realist genres such as utopia, science fiction and fantasy. The fantastic includes fiction about utopia, a category utopia' hinged on an ambiguity of its Greek root of ou meaning no' and eu meaning good'. Utopia is both a good place and no-place. Strange Boy, Paul Magrs's first book for Young Adults, is a first-person account of a few months in the life of 10-year-old David Levithan, who lives with his mother and his younger brother Chris. The sexual desires that are at the heart of these Young Adult fantastic novels nod toward the senses of fantasy' within psychoanalytic discourse, relating to sexual desire or perceptions of the world. Corrine M. Wickens notes how secrecy, silences, and coded language have long been associated with homosexuality and queer identities, particularly identified through phrases such as 'the closet' and 'being out'.
