Weirdness

I love science fiction.  Given my penchant for reading it, it's a wonder that only one of my novels is explicitly science fiction(although what I'm working on now can definitely be construed as such).  I grew up on Heir to the Empire, Quozl, Way of the Pilgrim, and Homeward Bound, and I'm always on the lookout for engrossing sci-fi.

Unfortunately, lots of science fiction is just...weird.

I get that it takes great imagination to see things in worlds we haven't yet really discovered.  And actual alien worlds are likely to be truly foreign to us, but that doesn't mean that the stories should be so off the wall.  The trick of a good author is to take the fantastical and make it readable.  That doesn't mean introducing weird ways to lay out the format or making things so out there that the reader can't comprehend them.  Creatures of pure hydrogen floating in the accretion disk of a black hole that only communicate in the 7th dimension through ripples in time may sound cool, but how many readers really follow such an alien story?  Same with something like a futuristic mind control creature that implants itself in the souls of small animals who squeak.  Maybe these kinds of things will indeed be how we find or interact with aliens in real life far from now, but does the audience really relate?

And don't get me started on "hard" science fiction.  I think that providing enough scientific context to allow the reader to immerse himself or herself in the world is great, but some folks go so much into the details that I feel like I'm reading a technical manual.  Sorry, but if I wanted that, I'd have studied engineering rather than picked up a book for a pleasant Sunday experience.

Yes, I know anything we find is unlikely to be bipedal or build great cities, or that gravitational waves may make space travel so dangerous that we need a Kardashev-level civilization to achieve it, but let's leave that to the scientists and engineers.  The rest of us just want to become enraptured by something that expands our minds but is relatable.  Am I not imaginative enough here?