(or at least until I find someone who actually writes the stuff once again where characters overcomes the technogeekery).

How do you classify writers like Le Guin? Or does she register for you as science fantasy, since the feasibility of the technology is not the point?

I recommend Caitlín R. Kiernan on general principle, but I would be curious to see how you react to her short novel The Dry Salvages (2004) and her newest collection A Is for Alien (2009), which are her forays into science fiction and in my opinion very successful ones. There is not a lot of technogeekery in them.