"A thoughtful-man named Maxwell Mouser had just produced a work of actinic philosophy. It took him seven minutes to write it. To write works of philosophy one used the flexible outlines and the idea indexes; one set the activator for such a wordage in each subsection; an adept would use the paradox, feed-in, and the striking-analogy blender; one calibrated the particular-slant and the personality-signature. It had to come out a good work, for excellence had become the automatic minimum for such productions.
“I will scatter a few nuts on the frosting,” said Maxwell, and he pushed the lever for that. This sifted handfuls of words like chthonic and heuristic and prozymeides through the thing so that nobody could doubt it was a work of philosophy."
From what you mentioned, it sounds like his books may be right up your alley.
It seems like the whole genre has become the demesne of nitpicky amateur astrophysicists instead of about humanity through the lens of projection and symbol as it used to be.
I don't care how "hard" your science is, I care what your book has to say about humanity, or at least how well it manages to entertain and enlighten.