Well, since we are talking about Karel Čapek, what about his book "The White disease", where a ruthless dictator of a big well armed country is preparing the attack on a small country during the pandemic of a new disease? A really good movie (in my opinion) based on that book is for free on YouTube (if you are not deterred by black and white movie with subtitles): https://youtu.be/HJMUIBEzYnI
In War with the newts during summer, the news reporters are complains that nothing is happening, there's nothing to write about, and then one of the news reporter suggest that some scientist should at least discover new vitamin so that they have something to write about. Written on 1936 but just as relevant today (I mean the entertaining role newspapers expects from the typical scientists).
Also, while it's really talking about stuff going on at its own time, War with the Newts is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_with_the_Newts