The Cube Root of Uncertainty

• "Introduction"
• "Passengers" (Orbit 4 1968)
• "Double Dare" (Galaxy 1956)
• "The Sixth Palace" (Galaxy 1965)
• "Translation Error" (Astounding 1959)
• "The Shadow of Wings" (If 1963)
• "Absolutely Inflexible" (Fantastic Universe 1956)
• "The Iron Chancellor" (Galaxy 1958)
• "MUgwump Four" (Galaxy 1959)
• "To the Dark Star" (The Farthest Reaches 1968)
• "Neighbor" (Galaxy 1964)
• "Halfway House" (If 1966)
• "Sundance" (F&SF 1969)

"Passengers" won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story and was nominated for the Hugo Award.^[1][2]

Joanna Russ gave the collection a mixed review, noting its division between early work ("Old Silverberg is an idiot") and more recent efforts ("New Silverberg is something else: a highly colored, gloomy, melodramatic, morally allegorical writer who luxuriates in lush description and has a real love of calamity"). She noted that even the better stories were marked by "the sophomoric dark doom that most of us -- far less technically expert -- dealt with during our apprenticeships."^[3]