The Draco Tavern

Short Story Collection,Tor Books, by Larry Niven

Contents 

THE SUBJECT IS CLOSED 
GRAMMAR LESSON 
ASSIMILATING OUR CULTURE, THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE DOING! 
THE SCHUMANN COMPUTER 
THE GREEN MARAUDER 
THE REAL THING 
WAR MOVIE 
LIMITS 
TABLE MANNERS* 
ONE NIGHT AT THE DRACO TAVERN 
THE HEIGHTS 
THE WISDOM OF DEMONS 
SMUT TALK 
SSOROGHOD’S PEOPLE 
THE MISSING MASS 
THE CONVERGENCE OF THE OLD MIMD 
CHRYSALIS 
THE DEATH ADDICT
STORM FRONT 
THE SLOW ONES 
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL 
THE ONES WHO STAY HOME 
BREEDING MAZE PLAYHOUSE
LOST 
LOSING MARS 
PLAYGROUND EARTH

When a tremendous spacecraft took orbit around the Earth's moon and began sending smaller landers down toward the North Pole, the newly arrived visitors quickly set up a permanent spaceport in Siberia. Their presence attracted many, and a few people grew conspicuously rich from secrets they learned from talking to the aliens. One of these men, Rick Schumann, established a tavern catering to all of the various species of visiting aliens, a place he named the Draco Tavern.
From the mind of #1 New York Times bestselling author Larry Niven come twenty-six tales and vignettes from this interplanetary gathering place, collected for the first time in one volume, including:
"The Subject Is Closed": A priest visits the tavern and goes one-on-one with a chirpsithra alien on the subject of God and life after death.
"Table Mannners: A Folk Tale": Rick Schumann is invited to hunt with five folk aliens, but he's not quite sure what their hunt entails, or if he will be the hunted.
"Losing Mars": In this previously unpublished tale, a group of aliens who call Mars and its moon home arrive at the tavern only to find that humans have mostly forgotten about their neighboring planet.

The cantina scene in Star Wars, as Niven (Ringworld) points out in his introduction, partakes of "a hoary old tradition," as do the 27 Draco Tavern stories in this solid SF collection. Most of the tales, set in the 2030s, are short-shorts, often reading like brilliant, half-whimsical notebook jottings. The inverted city carved out of the ice by ocean-dwelling creatures on Europa in "Playground Earth" could be the basis for a novel. Niven tosses it off in a sentence. Many of the best moments are similar hints: an overheard conversation about how an alien species casually denied humans immortality because the perception of death flavors human poetry ("Limits"). The most startling perspective of all comes from "The Green Marauder," in which a two-billion-year-old creature explains how the Earth was "ruined" by "pollution" long ago. These stories are best taken a few at a time, to savor their inventiveness without noticing the undeveloped characters or that, even for bar stories, there's sometimes too much chatter and not enough action. (Jan.)
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Throughout an award-winning 40-year career, Niven has taken time out for brief layovers at his favorite interspecies watering hole, the Draco Tavern. Run by inimitable multimillionaire Rick Schumann in the middle of Siberia, where the enigmatic extraterrestrial Chirpsithra made first contact with humans, the saloon serves as trading post and chat room for aliens from every corner of the galaxy. Here Niven corrals all the Draco Tavern tales into one volume that consequently showcases his ability to use sf to explore mind-boggling, universal questions. In one story, the Chirpsithra reveal knowledge of a species that learned what waits beyond death--but were the resulting mass suicides provoked by discovering heaven, or nothingness? In others, Niven inspects such ultimate conundrums as immortality, extraterrestrial intelligence, and computers that outstrip their creators' cleverness. Most of the 27 stories are short shorts that, taken altogether, radiate Niven's wit and technological inventiveness. A must for Nivenites and just plain good reading for everyone else. Carl Hays
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