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Guessing that there is no such example, but if there is, I'm very interested in knowing about it.
Just as a short example, just to make it clear it's possible; the example is not intended to be a work of art, but a proof of concept: "The sun set in the sky, but just beneath the ocean's surface, a volcano was slowly working it's way to the light of the next day. In the morning, waves crashed against the rising lava flows."
UPDATE:
Thanks to all who have commented, to clarify the intent of the question, it's an attempt to understand the nature of characters by removing them. My hope is that in doing so, my understanding of characters and their function will grow in some way.
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I don't have examples of what you ask for, but in the revision: You could say that the role of "characters" is that they have choices and intents. The sun does not choose to rise, the volcano does not choose to erupt, and the waves do not choose to crash.
A character, be it a fish or dog on the beach or human, can choose to run or stay, and there are consequences to either choice. The author can engineer the circumstances to make those consequences large: Life or death. Abandoning your children or risking death to stay and protect them.
The effect of characters, and their ability to make choices, is an uncertainty in the consequences and outcome of the decision that readers find interesting.
I think it would be very difficult to create interest in a fictional recount of biology, geology, astronomy, and so forth that basically led from state to another state, with no real consequences for anybody or anything.
In human psychology, stories are expected to have emotional consequences, not just consequences for dead rocks and water or dead suns and asteroids. What the author writes is supposed to make a difference, however subtle, in those eventual emotional consequences: It changes the characters feelings, minds, choices, actions. The settings influence them (or are allusions to their feelings; hence the clichés of equating 'rain' with 'tears' or 'fireworks' with 'love' or 'orgasms').
The role of characters is to make the story matter to the reader.
Reading through your story makes me think that, in a way, the narrator has to be a character himself. The story doesn't even have to revolve around the narrator for him to count as a character.
I'm using the rough and loose definition of a character as anything that shares the person-like quality of having a personality and of thinking. So, the rabbits in the Watership Down are characters because they all behave and think person-like. A story about a rock that wants to see whats on the other side on the hill it's resting on, has the human-like quality of thinking.
Any story you would want to tell would need to have a narrator, basically some voice through which to communicate the story with. The fact that you now have someone to observe/speak of the event, means you necessarily would need to have a character, someone or something with the ability to perceive and think and tell the story in a way that is funny, engaging, meaningful, or even boring.
Essentially, you can't have a story without a character because, without anyone to see the story unfold, there can't be a story to be told in the first place. It's like that age old adage about the tree that falls in the woods... if there is no one there to hear it (or in our case, see it), does it really fall? Do we really have a story to tell if no one is there to either see or tell of it?
All you need, in place of your characters, is a strong dose of anthropomorphize-ing. By implying human characteristics and emotions within inanimate and insensate objects, you bypass the need for actual intelligent actors.
I have a stand-alone chapter in one of my unpublished works, which describes the battle between an old wooden dock and the relentless ocean waves. When I wrote it, I was attempting a deliberate hommage to the Ray Bradbury piece which is mentioned in another answer. That characterless chapter turned out to be one of the prettiest, most poetic things, I've ever written.
Your submerged volcano story has the same potential. Imagine a world of endless sea, with primitive life hidden beneath the waves, ready to crawl out on dry land, but trapped by the totally aquatic nature of their planet. Enter the hero, a mound of growing lava, bubbling up from a fissure in the ocean floor. Follow its adventures as it reaches up hopelessly for the distant surface. Share in its sorrows as structural flaws and air pockets collapse, causing a loss of precious height. Celebrate its triumph when unfiltered sunshine finally falls upon its finally dry shore. It is the Rocky story!... told with real rocks!
This one is so easy to answer:
The World Without Us -- see at Amazon.com
It's all about the world after we are all gone. And it is definitely speculative fiction.
How did everyone miss this easy answer?
there is no story without characters, because there is nobody then to experience the passing of time. In this case, no changes, events, etc. can happen and therefore it is not a "story".
There's certainly a fair number of science-fiction and fantasy stories that describe a world, a society, or some other concept, without relying on individual characters. Talking about a people, but not about anyone in particular.
Similarly, a lot of Jorge Luis Borges stories are about describing a fantastical concept - "The Library of Babel" and "The Babylon Lottery" spring to mind immediately. I think "Library" might possibly have a narrator, but it might as well not have.
I'd say this type of story has no characters, because it has no actors, nobody individual we're focusing on. But there is a nebulous "they" - "the people," "it was decided," etc., - that moves the story forward; you can't point to any particular character, but there are people somewhere in the picture.
It is possible to have a story without character - that is living beings that have thought processes and some amount of intelligence. This would include people, animals, aliens, robots, etc. There are two types of characters - flat and round. Flat characters are generally those that are background characters that don't evolve or change throughout the piece. Round characters will evolve and develop at the story goes on.
It is not, however, possible to have a story without a subject. There are no characters in your example, but there are subjects - the sun, the volcano, the waves. A story's subject can be a character, but it doesn't have to be. The subject can be an inanimate object such as a house or a planet.
Your writing sample actually looks a lot like what you might find in creative non-fiction - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_nonfiction
Creative non-fiction is an interesting genre because authors try to stick to the truth and reality, yet being unable to define either.
Most of what I read focuses on nature, natural events, and the author's relationship with them. I enjoy how the authors I read avoided a lot of metaphors. Unfortunately I can't remember any of their names or the titles of the books (just stopped in and saw your question) - perhaps someone else can offer some more suggestions.
Edit: Here's one - The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" kinda doesn't have characters. Sorta. It does have people, though mostly abstractly.
If I am understandig well, you want some story without any conscious character. I am afraid there is no other stories of that kind excepting various descriptions of natural or artificial processes with "soulless" actors only (Big Bang, fusion bomb ignition, fertilisation, economic cycle).
Unfortunately, I can't think of any stories that follow your strict requirement on excluding anything that "is able to reproduce".
The closest I could come is Ray Bradbury's short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains" (note: link goes to a PDF file). Unfortunately, there are some animals in it, and humans are referred to. Also, as Lynn noted regarding the sun, you could argue that the house is a character.
The question does arise, however: with absolutely no characters, or reference to living things, what story is there to tell? There would be no room for character development, and I can't imagine much conflict arising from such a story, either.
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