Nadia vs. the Black Swan

Simone wrote in with a comment about CLOAK OF SHARDS:

“Hi Jonathan, just finished Cloak of Shards, it is wonderful, thank you! I am also going to use the expression you coined, “black swan event” We live in interesting times, so I have referred to those situations as “when frosen turkey falls out of airplane right onto your head”, but “black swan event” is just so much more sophisticated!”

Thanks! I am glad you enjoyed CLOAK OF SHARDS. Though I expect a frozen turkey landing upon one’s head would qualify as a black swan event.

Anyway, the specific bit we’re talking about is this spoiler-free section from CLOAK OF SHARDS:

###

“You saved us all. Not Tarlia, not the nobles, not the Wizard’s Legion, not the police, you. Do you know what a ‘black swan event’ is?”

“No.”

“An intellectual named Taleb came up with the idea right before the Conquest. To put it in normal-people language, it’s a massive event that comes out of nowhere and can’t be predicted.”

###

I should mention that I did not invent the concept of a black swan event. A statistician named Nassim Taleb coined the idea about twenty years ago.

So what is a black swan event? According to Wikipedia:

“The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.”

That definitely describes the conflict that Nadia faces in CLOAK OF SHARDS – what turns out to be the central conflict in the book isn’t what she or anyone else excepts to happen. (Except, of course, for the instigator of the conflict.)

Of course, the last twenty-one years or so of Real Life have seen a flock of black swan events shooting past, and they’ve had big effects on our lives. This has definitely influenced the way I’ve been writing the CLOAK MAGE books. Like, in the CLOAK MAGE setting, Earth has been essentially stagnant for the three hundred years since the Conquest. Then the events of CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL happened, and Tarlia realized that there were going to be big changes to human and Elven civilization even if she did nothing, so she had better try to steer them in a non-destructive direction.

Some of the plot of CLOAK OF SHARDS is Tarlia trying to get ahead of events, but for more details, you shall have to read and find out. 🙂

-JM