Mini Review | Several People Are Typing by Carl Kalsulke
🤖🤖🤖🤖 4/5 Chatbots – So weird, so silly. I loved it
Format: Kindle
Read: October 2023
The premise of this silly little book is that employee Gerald accidentally uploads himself, rather than his spreadsheet of coat purchase options, to his workplace messaging app, Slack. I have no experience of what Slack is but I assume it’s like Microsoft Teams!
As Gerald tries to convey his plight to his colleagues, and tries to find out what’s going on with his body (and how to get back in it), the story is told through various chat logs which means it’s a short read and really easy to blow through in a couple of sittings. It’s impressive how much plot and character could be expressed in so few words on the page. Somehow it even packs in a surprisingly cute romance! It leaves a lot for your imagination to fill in the blanks, which for me was the fun.
Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler [*]I will say on the romance element it is a bit weird and potentially some people will see it as problematic that Pradeep has sex with Gerald’s body. I thought about this and Gerald hadn’t been in his body for quite a long time at that point, and Slackbot had taken it over which was the real violation. Gerald’s mind and consciousness was fully elsewhere.
There were also a few other bizarre subplots where I have no idea what was going on (what was with Doug and pears?) but I really did enjoy the ride!
Recommended if you want a short, weird bit of silliness to pass the time!
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