Voyage of the Space Beagle

The Voyage of the Space Beagle, a consolidation of stories published in 1939 and the early 1940's by A.E. Van Vogt, is cited as one of the inspirations for the 1970s movie Alien.  It's a great read, once you get past the mumbo-jumbo about the science of "Nexialism," which I suppose is kind of related to Van Vogt's love of "next-step-in-mental-evolution" concepts like the "Null-A" philosophy...

The adventures in this book are pretty cool, even if the crew never learns and actually invites an alien species into their spaceship with dire results not once, but twice!  Still, the description of the predatory alien species are wonderful; anything that inspired the awesome Alien movie is o.k. with me, and this is a fun read.