1. I haven’t read any sci-fi for about a year now, but that’s because I’m reading very little (I really music start buying audio books as podcasts are the only thing I have time for) and there are so many non-fiction books I want to read.

2. I don’t think all science fiction in the last few years falls foul of being overly written: take Peter F. Hamilton as an example.

3. Is the urge to concentrate on the writing style rather than the plot the same as the computer games industry’s need to have better graphics over compelling game play?

To all of this I would add the note that I’m very behind the wave as far as reading goes. I have never purchased a science fiction magazine, so my short story consumption has only been in the form of the odd Asimov and Clarke collections I have read. The books I have read in this genre have normally been available for at least five years. Neverness I read in 2006, Revelation Space in 2007. For me these were new and exciting and by then the world had moved on. I have tried to rectify this by noting down the nominations for various awards, but as I have a back-log of books to read this has become a moot point.

I was also interested to hear William Gibson comment in an interview that he doesn’t read science fiction at all. Is this, I am still wondering, a better way to gather ideas? By reading in the same genre I wish to write in am I at risk of just mimicking? I don’t think so as long as my other forms of input are extensive, but who knows.

Still, to return to the crux of your post, and my thoughts on the subject, I don’t disagree that some of the sci-fi authors out there are now aiming at a different level (style?) of writing than was being produced in the previous century, and maybe this is at the detriment to the story itself, but there are also plenty of other authors out there who write like Dick et al. Hamilton is just one example, but Adams also springs to mind as does Banks. (As an aside, when I have read both Adams and Banks more recently I have commented to friends on, what I considered, their simplistic style of writing.)