User:DoctorWho42/Introduction to The Cube Root of Uncertainty

"Introduction to The Cube Root of Uncertainty" is an essay by American author Robert Silverberg. It was published in the 1970 short story collection The Cube Root of Uncertainty.

Background
The stories in The Cube Root of Uncertainty were published between 1954 and 1968.

Content
The universe is full of trap doors. Some learn this earlier than others. Silverberg doesn't mean the final trapdoor which surprises with its timing and manner. He means the obstacles before it. Plato warns no man is happy until their life has ended. There are myriad ways life can be boobytrapped. News, random events, drugs, and technology deluge you. Much of the technological troubles are new. Life grows increasingly complicated. The SF writer has to figure out this new complex. A virtue of science fiction is that it can transmute nightmare into entertainment and vice-versa. The writer has to envision new trapdoors to drop characters. This complicated future is reserved but it can be sampled as entertainment. The earlier stories were written before their predictions were actualized. The later stories are bleak and thorny given more experience with trapdoors. Cheery tales include "Double Dare" and "Mugwump Four." Grim ones includes "Passengers" and "Sundance." Silverberg's view of the future has grown bleaker.

Reception
In 1971, Son of the WSFA Journal's James Newton called it "a beautifully simple introduction." The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction's Joanna Russ appraised "The future seems bright for an author who can write in his Introduction (excusable because it's funny, the first use I have seen Mr. Silverberg make in print of his really extraordinary wit): "The newspapers teem with the horrors that smite us: the swerving auto, the collapsing bridge, the ptomaine in the vichyssoise, the fishhook in the filet of sole. . . But. . . the gorgeous worst is yet to come."" In 1972, Vector's John Bowles decided "Silverberg's introduction sets out what is supposedly the theme of the collection: that through sf we can vicariously experience the nightmares of the future and thus convince ourselves that however bad things are now, "it's going to be uncertainty cubed in centuries to come."