Why do so many fans love it?

[Asimov's] Foundation series is much beloved by many SF fans, although it suffers from a ubiquitous and debilitating dryness of tone. It is almost entirely composed of dialogue, often of an expository or explicatory nature; there is little description, a fact which renders the sequence visually inert; and the characterisation is rudimentary. Why do so many fans love it?

A. Roberts, The history of Science Fiction (2005), 197

I love it. It's proper grand concept Science Fiction, though the maths is all wrong. 

[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