that was a fantastic book, and the Arguing On the Internet in it was both very descriptive of it's time and very prescient of ours.

and the aliens (no spoilers) in it were very cool

The author is Vernor Venge (pron. "Vengie"?); He's not exactly prolific. He's done a couple of other books in the same world. They're good too. But his day-job was teaching maths and CS.

I wonder what you could do with the film-rights to that story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep

*Vinge

Thanks - too late to fix.