Julia's Bookshelves

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• Page Count: 256
• Genre: Science Fiction, Satire

Anyone with an office job knows that instant messaging platforms are a cornerstone of the modern workplace. With texting being central to communication culture, and the pandemic shifting office culture away from five days a week in-office, many workplaces make use of MS Teams, Slack, or something similar to collaborate and communicate.

Messaging dominates our lives, and yet I’d never read a book before that focused purely on this mode of communication to tell a story.

Enter Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke, a story told entirley through Slack messages of team members at a PR firm. Gerald’s conscience is somehow uploaded to the Slack channel and he is completely disconnected from his body. While his coworkers navigate the highs and lows of office life, Gerald has to convince someone to believe he is not, in fact, working from home, and needs help finding a way back to his physical body.

It’s an odd, amusing, and satirical premise that plays on the all-consuming work culture that dominates the United States. We may not be physically stuck in Slack channels like Gerald, but it’s not unfamiliar to feel that way. There are several secondary plotlines following the dramas of other characters working on separate projects for the company, all which range from mundane to mystical and absurd and fill the story with a sense of realism amidst the science fiction central plot.

We communicate heavily in our lives through instant messaging services, and doing so in a corporate setting brings an odd dynamic. We want to be human, but also professional, always inoffensive, but equally efficient and likable. There is a whole different set of social rules at play that come out through the plot in Several People Are Typing. Connection, honesty, and emotion still exist, but have to be handled with a delicacy in order to maintain one’s place in the workplace structure. A unique character in play in the story is Slackbot, the automated chatbot with which Gerald frequently speaks to during the story. Their conversations dive into a fascinatingly rich space, where the two have a strange push and pull on the limited but valuable experience of being human, versus the broad landscape of being an all-knowing chatbot.

It raises questions about what it means to be a human, what differentiates our brains from computers, and how capitalism influences our communication and connections.

The book is equally amusing as it is discomforting, as it forces readers to confront the daily routine of their own realities and the presence of work in their own lives. Kasulke’s wholehearted commitment to the absurdity of the plot, and the display of genuine nonchalance from the characters accepting the fantastical in their day to day is humorous and entertaining. From the familiar and amusing anecdotes like “what is a workplace but a cult where everyone gets paid” to the surprisingly thought-provoking lines such as “we love to say the digital is fleeting like a sunset but these scraps of ourselves we fling into the ether will outlive most of us, like the sun,” this book takes readers on a rollercoaster of emotions.

It’s definitely a book that will hit home most if you’ve worked in a corporate environment, but regardless, for fans of a fast-paced, twists and turns story, Several People Are Typing is a unique read that will surprise you!