1) 'Fringe' authors that rock: Charles Stross. Seriously. Read accelerando. It's amazing and a half.
2) Minecraft has simple gameplay concepts, not simple gameplay. It is, as video games these days go, really quite open ended. It doesn't have the complexity of DF, but honestly, that's not a fair standard. Toady has constructed a masterpiece, and a masterpiece in a completely different genre. Also, minecraft isn't even remotely close to feature complete. It is a wonderful game, and like another game we all play, it generates some really amazing worlds. Amazing in a totally different way, but quite amazing nonetheless. Really, load up minecraft, set the difficulty to peaceful, and just walk/swim in a direction for a few hours. You'll enjoy it. There are very few games I can say that about.
3) The DDOS fiasco was... Well, shameful. Is minecraft's player community as awesome as DF's player community? Hell no. Obviously not. But find me another game that has a community that's even remotely as good as this one. What we have here is incredibly exceptional. I think it's ok for that to mean that you've become spoiled, but please don't let it mean that you take this for granted. This community and this game are incredible for so many reasons, and we're all very lucky to be a part of it. Minecraft's community is not one I feel lucky to be a part of, but it's not all bad either. There are some pretty cool people who play that game, and a few of them even frequent the minecraft.net boards. It's just that in any given community, the people who suck will always stand out more, because they have no filter. People who have profoundly distorted senses of reality are generally incapable of judging the appropriate 'volume' at which to voice their complaints. It doesn't mean there are more of them, it only means that they are louder.
4) If you were thinking about playing minecraft, but you got turned off by the reports about the community, please, reconsider. It's a great game in it's own right, and it has a lot of room to grow into something truly special. Don't let idiots on the internet prevent you from experiencing it. (Also, there is a neat utility somewhere out there that lets you port a DF map into a minecraft map, and you can wander your fort as a mine-crafter. It's pretty ghetto. But it's also kind of cool.) I play the hell out of both games, and I find they compliment each other pretty nicely. I'm unemployed right now, so pretty much all I do is hang out on the forums and play minecraft/DF, and honestly, if I could only play one or the other, I'd have gone insane by now... Or worse yet, found a job.