I think the most famous example is probably “Pale fire” by Nabokov. Not sci-fi, but very very fun! George Perec write some interesting concept books. One is about this apartment in Paris where every chapter just describes a random room in the building, but slowly tells a story of the inhabitants.

Missing is “have to use that one chemical you’re actually scared of”. For me it’s trizol

I think it was just the idea of this friar watching mice fuck seemed pornographic in a way. I don’t think maintaining mice colony was the issue, it was the sex.

Fun fact: he wanted to study mice breeding but the church said no because it was lewd. If he had he probably wouldn’t have figured things out since mice genetics aren’t as simple as peas.

A lot of those academic “printed on demand” books are like this, too. Very annoying. Yea they’re out of print and old library physical copies cost over $100, but the “new” ones always look like this but faded instead of over saturated.