The Voyage of the Space Beagle

I thought this would be a nice read (3 star) mainly for it's influence on later books, but it was much more enjoyable than I was expecting.

Plot summary: These are the voyages of the starship “Space Beagle”, it's five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!

This is very obviously the granddaddy of the later series called “Star Trek”.

A couple of additional notes:
* While the story is very episodic (think original series Star Trek), there is an over-all plot thread about the science of “Nexialisim”, the moral of the story is clearly that we make a mistake by putting knowledge into boxes and specialities. We need to cooperate more.
* These guys are going where no man has gone before. It is actually a ship full of men. That was explicitly stated so as to reduce tensions on board. I would have thought this would be counter productive.

I'm glad I read this, mainly for the historical interest - but also a fun story with some interesting ethical conundrums.