Triplanetary

Before Star Wars, before Star Trek, before the concept of galactic warfare existed as we know it, E.E. "Doc" Smith wrote this. Two ancient alien races wage an eons-long shadow war across the cosmos, and Earth sits squarely in the crossfire. The Arisians, mentalists of unimaginable power, have foreseen the Eddorians' corrupt invasion of their galaxy, so they begin a breeding program across every inhabited world spanning millennia. Their goal: to create superhuman defenders capable of holding back the darkness. What follows is pure, uncut space opera energy, the kind of story that taught an entire genre how to think big. Smith writes with the confidence of a man who invented the rules as he went along, and the result is propulsive, pulpy, and utterly unafraid of scale. If you've ever loved a story about ordinary people rising to cosmic challenges, you're reading the source code.