The short story “A History of Future Illnesses” by Chen Qiufan was published for the first time in 2012.

Stanley comes from the future to explain which diseases, both physical and mental, will afflict humanity in the coming ages. In several cases technological developments caused new problems, in others they brought changes that magnified problems that in the past were much more limited.

Chen Qiufan explored possible negative consequences of technological developments and more in various stories. Often he has a special eye for the situation in modern China, which in a few decades made leaps forward in many fields but how much of that has been real progress and what are the consequences? With a projection of possible future changes and using a semi-serious tone, in “A History of Future Illnesses” he offers a vision of the possible diseases that will affect humanity in the future. The fact that in the near future it’s the “iPad Syndrome” makes it clear from the beginning where he’s going.

An important point is that “A History of Future Illnesses” isn’t a trivial criticism of new technologies with a touch of Luddism. in the iPad Syndrome chapter, Chen Qiufan talks about very little children who are given these tablets and videos uploaded to YouTube that show them while using them receiving millions of clicks and likes. In essence, he starts from reality to tell the possible consequences with ample doses of a really caustic humor. That’s just the beginning because the author imagines future diseases caused by the abuse of technologies that can be even more invasive and insidious.

The pattern of the various diseases described by Chen Qiufan is more or less the same, with a technology that gets adopted with too much enthusiasm without properly assessing the consequences. The author’s skill is in telling them in a non-trivial way that gives the idea of events that are ​​possible even when they’re extremely advanced technologies that can cause disasters when misused. It can be said that people who superficially adopt certain technologies end up being used instead of using them. Such food for though is what made reading “A History of Future Illnesses” interesting for me. This short story is available translated into English by Ken Liu in the anthology “Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation”.