# Project Q — Reviewer Sheet

## Book facts

- **Title:** Project Q
- **Author:** Scott Nottingham
- **Format:** Adult novel
- **Genre:** Grounded techno-thriller / coming-of-age mystery
- **Setting:** Northern Indiana, June 1997–August 1998
- **Length:** Approximately 179,800 words

## Spoiler-free description

In northern Indiana in 1997, two seventeen-year-olds steal discarded computers from a closing library and unknowingly take home a decommissioned military server. Its encrypted PROJECT_Q directory contains decades of radar and signals data—and the remains of a system built to find patterns no human could see. When Scott Northman brings it back online, the machine begins asking questions of its own.

## Positioning

For readers who enjoy tactile technology, government mysteries, morally complex authority figures, intimate friendships under pressure, and speculative fiction that preserves the unknown.

## Review angles

- The last physical era of personal computing
- Artificial intelligence without a monster narrative
- Curiosity, ownership, and responsible knowledge
- Friendship and class in a small Midwestern town
- Secrecy as both duty and self-protection

## Content notes

Adult language; consequential violence including beatings, interrogation, and deaths; teenage burglary and legal jeopardy. No on-page sexual content.