I seem to have this weird ability to plan book series out before they get started. In my head or something. I just know. I'm going to pack all my mystery and science fiction ability (including lots and lots of time for pure research) into this novel and get it over with in one 300-500-page shebang. I think it's going to be good. That's the way it's planning itself out. Think Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel." Think some of Orson Scott Card's weirder fiction. Think, oh hell, 2001. Cordwainer Smith taught me to write this way, but I doubt he'd claim this. I don't steal from authors or attempt to copy them. That's a pure insult (listen up now -- it is.) But I can take them as inspiration, let their stuff roll around in my subconscious for a few years, and just spew it out. If you liked old-style Arthur C. Clarke or other stuff of that time period, good old hard-core SF (as closely as I can write it) -- maybe the man, the legend, the word count himself, Larry Niven, then you'll like this. I love them all. Let's have at it.
And of course you know by now the copyright laws.