# Project Q — Host and Interview Guide

## A spoiler-free conversation

1. Why set this story specifically in 1997?
2. What changes when computers are heavy, local, noisy objects rather than invisible services?
3. How did northern Indiana and Grissom shape the story’s atmosphere?
4. Scott is an engineer and Emily is a reporter. How do their different ways of knowing complement each other?
5. Q is not written as a conventional villain. What did that choice make possible?
6. How did you balance period detail with forward motion?
7. What do you hope readers feel when the book refuses to explain everything?

## Spoiler warning

The questions below assume the audience has finished the novel.

1. Did you always know Q would choose erasure?
2. Which character changes most because of the final confrontation?
3. Why is Kane contained rather than publicly exposed?
4. What does Emily’s difficult-to-believe article say about truth without authority?
5. Is the final message an echo, a seed, or something else?

## Rapid-fire closer

- Favorite piece of obsolete technology in the book?
- Scott’s garage or Brad’s El Camino?
- Terminal, printer, or radio?
- The scene that was hardest to leave ambiguous?
- One 1997 artifact younger readers should try using?