Off topic but it would be nice is sci fi could be made in which not every scene had to be the most amazing, innovative, creative, eye popping visual you've ever seen. Story might become the star then.
It's called radio.
Seriously, I've heard radio adaptations from the 1940s or 1950s of classic science fictions stories, and they were excellent.
As far as story goes, they could follow the original better than film or TV adaptions, because their cost is pretty much proportional to length. For a visual adaption, cost is a function of length, number of settings, and complexity of those settings. With a visual adaptation you often need to cut out whole settings to keep costs down.
As far as visuals go, you leave that to the listener. A few deft words from a character or from a narrator to provide a little guidance, along with some sound effects, and the listen's imagination can fill the rest.
As an example of the kind of science fiction that was available on radio, here is the episode list for the early '50s program "Dimension X": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dimension_X_episodes
Only half-serious, since they pretty much go to the opposite extreme.