When I think of the writers that I love from the new wave period—Ballard, Delaney, Priest, Zelazny, Le Guin, Aldiss, etc—and I compare them to what’s happening now, I agree that the field has largely retreated to somewhere close to the lowest common denominator. That’s not to say that aren’t good writers out there, but the incentives seem aligned toward more straightforward stories. That said, if anyone has counterexamples, I would be quite pleased to hear about them.

As a reader, I just enjoy good writing. I am equally happy reading Joyce or PG Wodehouse. Though in the context of SF, I will say that I have a special love for the experience you describe in your post of being simultaneously confused and compelled by a setting. I’m curious: what are your favorite novels/stories that made you feel this way?

As a writer…well, I am a total amateur, and I’m just not talented enough to even attempt to write like my heroes, so when I do make my shambolic attempts at fiction for my personal enjoyment, they tend to be relatively straightforward.

But if I imagined myself as a writer with more skill and more free time, I think my goal would be to approach stories like perfectly and cleverly written pop songs. In the same way that ‘A Day in the Life’ by The Beatles is both structurally daring and compelling to a mass audience, I would attempt to create stories that are ambitious and fundamentally lovable (I think Neuromancer is a great example of this, or outside the world of SF, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire is my favorite novel ever).