GKC wrote:
Or, as Belloc said, for money.
I usually read to see if I like the product. If so, I buy more.
I was not enamored of FOREVER WAR, but that is not a judgment on what one should think of the book.
But, even if a book is written solely for money, nevertheless, an author can only put into a book that which he already has, and thus, there is always something there even if the author did not consciously intend it.
I think it was Isaac Asimov who wrote an amusing short story where William Shakespeare comes back to life in the 20th century and takes a class in Shakespeare at a university and fails the course because the professor tells him that he 'doesn't understand Shakespeare'. I think Asimov intended this as a humorous way of saying that commentators often read into books meaning that isn't there. But that isn't the lesson I took away from it, I took the lesson that often authors don't consciously realize just what they've said with their books, that there are meanings there that the author never consciously intended.
There is actually an entire discipline calling called 'linguistic forensics' dedicated to carefully parsing people's words to find the 'hidden meanings' that they may not have consciously intended to convey. Linguistic forensics are often used by detectives trying to solve a case, dealing with the testimony of suspects and eyewitnesses to determine if maybe the guilty party is accidentally confessing to the crime without realizing it. This kind of analysis is more an art than a science, but it has proved useful in solving real cases.
Now, about Forever War, I am mainly interested in it because it is one of the very rare species of science fiction novels that has won what might be called 'a triple crown' of science fiction awards, namely the Nebula, the Hugo and the Locus awards, which a sequel, 'Forever Peace' won a different kind of 'triple crown', the Hugo, the Nebula and the John W Campbell awards (and nominated for the Locus, without winning). Awards don't necessarily mean anything, but if a book has that kind of acclaim, it think it is probably pretty good.