The Draco Tavern [Hardcover]

Larry Niven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2006

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 at Mount Forel 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 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.

"Wisdom of Demons": The age-old question of wisdom vs. knowledge is asked when Rick is confronted by a human who has been granted the wisdom of an individual gligstith(click)optok alien.

"Losing Mars" in this unpublished tale, a group of aliens who call Mars and its moon home, arrive at the Tavern only to find that humans have mostly forgotten about their neighboring planet.

Join Rick Schummann and his staff as they explore the alien passersby and attempt to chronicle the seemingly infinite alien species that spend a few moments pondering life and all its questions within the Draco Tavern.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (January 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765308630
• ISBN-13: 978-0765308634
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 1 x 6.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #594,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

LARRY NIVEN is the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces. He lives in Chatsworth, California. JERRY POURNELLE is an essayist, journalist, and science fiction author. He has advanced degrees in psychology, statistics, engineering, and political science. Together Niven and Pournelle are the authors of many New York Times bestsellers including Inferno, The Mote in God's Eye, Footfall, and Lucifer's Hammer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Niven Writing to His Strengths, February 12, 2006

By 

James D. DeWitt "Alaska Fan" (Fairbanks, AK United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Draco Tavern (Hardcover)

I've been critical of Niven in my reviews of his most recent works. While some of his earlier works are among the very best science fiction, his more recent novels have been disappointing. With the publication of his Draco Tavern short stories, there's a return to his earlier form. Partly because he is writing to his strengths.

These stories span the period 1977-2006. Some of the older stories seem to have been revised a bit for this collection. But the stories illustrate what Niven has always done best: examine strange ideas. Not his limited skills at characterization, or his plotting. He's best at dreaming up ideas and exploring their implications. And his aliens have always been aliens.

Rick Schumann owns the Draco Tavern, and these are his stories. The owner-bartender is the narrative voice, and the adventures mostly, but not exclusively, happen to him. The stories are fairly short - some are very short - and involve the interaction of aliens with humans and with each other. Niven's subjects range from the existence of God to the perils of advanced computing. The last half of the collection focuses on various aspects of terrorism. I have the impression that some of them may have been revised to alter their focus. The refocus is mostly successful. But I wonder why Niven chose to be topical.

Reviewers should keep in mind this is a collection of loosely linked short stories. They were written over a period of nearly thirty years. So they offer only limited continuity, and there are some inconsistencies. But they do not seriously detract. The stories are fun, thought-provoking and offer glimpses of Larry Niven's best writing. Recommended.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of these might be Niven's literary immortality, March 28, 2006

By 

Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Draco Tavern (Hardcover)

_________________________________________________________________
These stories date from 1977 to 2006, and feature the very long-lived Chirpsithra, the masters of the galaxy's red-dwarf planets, and the owner-operators of the great interstellar liners that occasionally stop at Earth. The chirps mingle with the locals, and an amazing variety of other star-travelers, at the fabled Draco Tavern near their shuttle landing-ground at Mt. Forel, Siberia.

So pull up a really high barstool, so you can look the eleven-foot tall chirps in the eye, and order a tee tee hatch nex ool-compatible cocktail from the Draco's amazingly versatile barkeep....

Boy, are the Draco stories good. Age shall not wither, nor custom stale, the best of these remarkable vignettes: "The Green Marauder," "War Movie," "Limits." They might well become his literary immortality.

And some of the newer ones might well join the classics. The collection spans 1977 to 2006, including one or two first published here. There are minor retcons and continuity fixes, which help the flow. Check it out.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars almost perfect, January 26, 2006

By 

Dan Mcgarry (Ft Huachuca, az USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Draco Tavern (Hardcover)

The only reason this collection didn't get five stars is simple:
Lack of Continuity
If the editors had simply arranged them in order of publication date, which incidentally would have also put them in imaginary chronological order, then the book would be perfect.
Unfortunately, since the stories are arranged in random order, you have characters refering to events in the past, which are two or three stories further back in the book.
Still, it's Larry Niven. All the tales are great.
Buy it.