The benefit of growing up as a science fiction junkie is that the weird turns and twists in the story of the world don鈥檛 surprise me too much.

Sure, I鈥檓 shocked, appalled, disappointed, amused, bemused, scared, nervous, and kinda bummed out sometimes, but not surprised.

The phrase 鈥渢he new normal鈥� was bandied about quite a bit early on in the pandemic, way back in those heady, terrifying days of early 2020. Google trends shows the use of the phrase spiked in April of last year, to a level four times higher than at any point in the preceding several years.

It acknowledged that COVID was so disruptive, so outside of our recent experience, that there was no going back. We could only go forward, and find some new normal on the far side of the pandemic.

The term itself was a question, a plea for clarity.

Would office workers all stay home? Would schools and universities embrace virtual learning? Would there be a mass exodus of city-dwellers seeking the (perceived) safety of small towns?

Some of those things happened, to a certain extent. (It turns out that while some college lectures might work fine via Zoom, it鈥檚 pretty hard to teach a seven year old spelling over a video link.) But while we were waiting for all those things to settle down, a whole lot of other things happened.

I could list all of them 鈥� they鈥檇 include new vaccines, storms and fires, elections and political upheaval, and so on 鈥� but eventually it would start to sound like the verses from We Didn鈥檛 Start the Fire, and I don鈥檛 want to get that stuck in your head.

We didn鈥檛 get a new normal. We just got more abnormal, in new and exciting configurations.

The only thing I鈥檓 certain about is that there isn鈥檛 going to be a new normal.

There wasn鈥檛 really an old normal, either.

I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, and there were an awful lot of science fiction novels published in the late 1980s that assumed we were still going to be facing off with the Russians in 2100.

Whatever happens for more than a year becomes seen as normal, even if it鈥檚 weird, or terrifying, or stupid. The Iron Curtain, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, death from above at the whim of some Soviet general or American president having a bad day, that was terrifying. And it was also normal, for about 40 years.

And then everything changed, quite abruptly, and a lot of smart people were very surprised.

They shouldn鈥檛 have been. We shouldn鈥檛 be surprised about any of this.

The thing about science fiction is, it鈥檚 notionally about things that are possible (or implausible but cool, like starships and death rays) but which haven鈥檛 happened.

When we鈥檙e considering the future, we need to remember that an awful lot of stuff is possible. Some things take place over a longer term, and we can be pretty sure that climate change will still be an issue next year, we鈥檒l probably still be grumbling about taxes, and whoever is premier of Alberta will still be mad at whoever is prime minister in Ottawa.

But normal? No such thing.