''The Draco Tavern'' is a 2006 collection of
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
short stories by American writer
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are '' Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, '' The Mote in God's E ...
concerning the activities of Rick Schumann, the bartender of the Draco Tavern.
Fictional background story
The Draco tavern is located in
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
, near the Mount Forel spaceport. The tavern was created after a race of sentient aliens called Chirpsithra landed on
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...
.
The Chirpsithra stand 11 feet tall with salmon-pink
exoskeleton
An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton ( endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...
s. All of them appear to be female. They enjoy mild electric currents, whose effect on them is similar to that of alcohol on humans. They originated on
tidally locked planets around
red dwarf
''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. ...
suns. Eventually, they had control over every single red dwarf sun in the galaxy, or so they claim. They enjoy the company of other sentient beings, and are extremely intelligent.
Units of currency used for Chirp-Human commerce are the "svith" and trade markers, mentioned in the story "Cruel and Unusual".
When they first put their mile-wide bubbleships into orbit around the Moon and landed in Siberia, they brought a host of aliens with a desire to eat, drink and socialize, thus the Draco Tavern was designed to cater to their individual, very diverse, and often conflicting interests.
Notable stories include "Limits", in which Schumann overhears some traders talking about humans' limited lifespan giving them a unique approach to mathematics, thus justifying withholding the secret of immortality, and "The Green Marauder", in which a new "alien" species turns out to be from the early development of Earth's ecosystem before photosynthesis poisoned the atmosphere with oxygen.
Publication information
Several of the Rick Schumann/Draco Tavern short stories which have appeared in other short story collections by Larry Niven were not reprinted in this book; there have also been further stories in the series since the publication of the book. The stories included in this anthology are mostly printed in the chronological order in which they were originally published.
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 Mind"
* "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"
References
External links
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Reviewat SFReviews.Net
2006 short story collections
Short story collections by Larry Niven
Fictional drinking establishments
Tor Books books
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