Look to the subgenres of science fiction called "hard" and "high concept". In hard sf, scientific plausibility is a major desideratum - Andy Weir's The Martian

Look to the subgenres of science fiction called "hard" and "high concept". In hard sf, scientific plausibility is a major desideratum - Andy Weir's The Martian is a widely known recent example, with the entire story built on a foundation of entirely plausible near-future space engineering. (It's also a somewhat rare example in which this focus on feasibility does not come at the cost of characterization.) In the related but distinct high-concept sf, the story is designed around a given concept such as "what if humans became telepathic?" or "what if FTL communication was possible but FTL travel was not?", and serves to explore the consequences of this idea in great detail. Unlike hard sf, the concept doesn't have to be plausible, but like it, one often encounters stories where the concept outweighs the characters. I think Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time is a good example here, outdoing the reputation of its field by using its concept to tell a compelling and beautiful story that also happens to be about giant sapient jumping spiders.