I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of “well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine”.
I mean there’s gotta be another way. Examples?
You might enjoy N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. The setting at first appears as fantasy, but there is a sci-fi-like depth to everything. The climate and periodic catastrophic Seasons, the tectonics, orogeny (humans’ magic-like abilities to manipulate heat and tectonics), and “high-tech” of the world’s past history.