[Tinsel] possessed all the qualities of silver plus one more – pathos

Flaubert once said that he liked tinsel better than silver  because it possessed all the qualities of silver plus one more – pathos. … Of all the pulps, SF pulp is the most tinselly: partly in the sense that its content was more dazzling, starry, most likely to lift its readers’ eyes, metaphorically, to the brilliances above us; but partly also in the sense that it was aware and even revelled in its own cheapness.

A. Roberts, The history of Science Fiction (2005), 175