A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (4.5 stars)

On page 19 I was already impressed.  It was at about that point that I realised I was seeing the world through an alien pack intelligence's eyes, which struck me both as a very innovative concept, and for the skill with which it was delivered.  I gradually learned more and more aspects of the Tines' anatomy, communication, social norms, and even reproduction, all starting with the sentence:

He brought up another member to get a parallax view.

 and more like these:

A few yards into the mob and Peregrine Wickrackrum could feel consciousness slipping from him.  If he concentrated really hard, he could remember who he was and that he must get to the other side of the meadow without attracting attention.

And the technology aspects are great.  You can see Vinge is a comp sci professor.  Relay struck me as sounding a little like Google, and the text is littered with references to one-time-pad crypto, and gems like this:

Blueshell had a humor fit at Pham's faith in public key encryption....

...and the creature fell apart like some cheap, center-topology network. 

Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience 

I was slightly weirded-out by Pham Nuwen being from Canberra - a once great civilisation fallen back to medieval times.  I lived for some time in Canberra, Australia.

For Pham Nuwen really was a barbarian.  He had been born on a fallen colony world - Canberra he called it.

The silly humans awake an extremely advanced and deadly artificial intelligence 'a perversion', which is fascinating to anyone interested in computer security.  It is like they have unleashed a super-intelligent piece of malware that begins to take over the universe.  Even the defences suggested in the text parallel modern-day content sanitisation.  This sounds a little bit like converting between document formats to break any embedded malware:

...then there are obvious procedures that can give relative safety: Do not accept High Beyond protocol packets.  At the very least, route all communications through Middle Beyond sites, with translation down to, and then up from, local trade languages.

 Also, the 'Usenet' discussion was really entertaining, and captures the often farcical misunderstanding and miscommunication of computer security issues on the Internet, and the spirit of a mild flaming:

...Who is a fool? [probably obscenity]  [probably obscenity] Idiots who don't follow all the threads in developing news should not waste my precious ears with their [clear obscenity] garbage.  So you think the "Helper Symbiosis" is a fraud of Straumli Realm?  And what do you think cause the fall of Relay?  In case your head is totally stuck up your rear [<-probable insult], there was a Power allied with Relay...

Sadly we are still some way from voice activated controls that:

...responded consistently to sarcasm and casual slang.

Slight spoilers ahead...

I was a little surprised by the ending.  I was expecting 'Old One' to turn out as a front for the Blight itself.  Also I completely agreed with this statement:

In some ways the Revenge was a worse thing than the Blight itself.

Sticking a huge hunk of the galaxy into slowness, stranding millions of vessels forever.  Somehow, this didn't sound much like 'saving' the galaxy to me.

But overall, a fantastic book, I endorse the Hugo decision :)  4.5 stars