Mate, everything throughout history has been people-oriented. Almost every famous story throughout history has had a main character, because that's what humans find easiest to identify with: other people.
You are confusing 'character-led' with 'includes characters.' Plenty of stories are primarily about an abstract idea, place, or ethical lesson and the characters only exist to explain the ideas or move the plot along. This is in contrast to 'character-led' fiction, in which the primary focus is the character themselves and their development.
Quite a few early SF stories were gimmick-oriented.
As an example, one old short story - I've forgotten the name - involves a space race from Earth to Jupiter and back (or something like that). The participants usually go full blast 1/2-way there, invert to slow down, then repeat to get back.
The main character starts with an engine problem or something, can't catch up, then in a burst of inspiration realizes he can use Jupiter's gravity to swing around, at speed.
Everyone at first wonders if there's a problem, then when it happens they realize the brilliance of what happened.
My interpretation is the author had just learned about gravity assist ("first used in 1959 when the Soviet probe Luna 3 photographed the far side of Earth's Moon" says Wikipedia) and structured the entire story around that concept.
The people were secondary to the orientation.
While it's true what you said about almost every famous story, most SF is not made of famous stories.
(I would be grateful if anyone can tell me the name of the story I just summarized.)
