Why Fiction Matters #1: Project Hail Mary

Every month in this series, I want to take one work of fiction and answer a simple question: What does this story teach us about being human?

I'm starting with Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary.

If you somehow haven't heard of it yet, it's a science fiction novel about a dying Sun, an impossible mission, and a very reluctant hero. The premise sounds ridiculous on paper. The Sun is slowly dimming, Earth is freezing, and humanity has to solve a problem so enormous that every major country is forced to work together. Throw in alien microbes, interstellar travel, and enough physics to make your high school science teacher proud, and you've got Project Hail Mary.

But that's not why I love it.

For me, this has never really been a book about saving humanity. It's a book about humanity itself.

One of my favourite things about the novel is how it takes one of the biggest anxieties of our time and flips it on its head. We spend so much time worrying about a warming planet that Weir asks us to imagine the opposite. What if the Sun itself was dying? What if our biggest problem wasn't escaping the heat, but surviving the cold?

The scenario is fictional, but the questions it raises aren't.

How would governments react? Who would lead? Would countries genuinely work together, or would politics get in the way? The novel's answer is refreshingly realistic. People cooperate because they have to, but they never stop being people.

Governments still argue. Scientists disagree. Bureaucracy doesn't magically disappear because the stakes are high. Nobody suddenly becomes perfect. They're still brilliant, selfish, compassionate, frustrating, and painfully human.

I also love that Ryland Grace is nothing like the hero you'd expect. He's not fearless. He isn't a soldier, a genius with all the answers, or someone desperate to save the world. He's a science teacher who spends a good portion of the book confused, terrified, and trying to figure things out one step at a time.

And somehow, that makes him a far more convincing hero.

Then there's Rocky.

Without spoiling anything, Rocky is one of my favourite fictional characters ever written. The friendship that develops between him and Grace is genuinely one of the most touching relationships I've read in years. They're separated by billions of years of evolution. They don't share a language, a culture, or even the same biology. Yet they slowly learn to communicate, trust each other, and eventually care for one another.

I don't think that's really a story about aliens. I think it's a story about empathy.

We live in a world where people struggle to understand others who simply come from a different country, religion, or political ideology. Project Hail Mary asks us to imagine understanding someone who evolved under an entirely different star.

That idea has stayed with me long after I finished the book.

This is why I always push back when people dismiss fiction as "just made up." Of course the science isn't real. There aren't alien engineers waiting for us somewhere in space. But the people feel real. The fear feels real. The hope feels real.

And one day, humanity may genuinely face a crisis that forces us to put politics, religion, and nationalism aside in favour of something bigger than ourselves. Whether that's climate change, a pandemic, or something we can't even imagine yet, we'll still be the same flawed, stubborn, hopeful species that Weir writes about.

Maybe that's why Project Hail Mary resonates with so many people.

The science is fascinating, but it's the humanity that makes the story unforgettable.

And that's why fiction matters.

Cover Photo by: Post by @garforarts