The Draco Tavern

by Larry Niven Narrated by Tom Weiner

Overview

When a tremendous spacecraft took orbit around 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 grew conspicuously rich from secrets they learned from talking to the aliens. One of these men, Rick Schumann, established a tavern catering to all the various species of visiting aliens, a place he named the Draco Tavern.

From the mind of bestselling author Larry Niven come twenty-seven tales and vignettes from this interplanetary gathering place, collected for the first time in one volume. Join Rick and his staff as they chronicle the seemingly infinite alien species that spend a few moments pondering life and all its questions within the Draco Tavern.

The stories include*“The Subject Is Closed,” in which 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,” in which 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folk aliens, but he's not quite sure what their hunt entails-or if he will be the hunted; “Losing Mars,” a previously unpublished tale in which a group of aliens who call Mars and its moon home arrive at the tavern only to find that humans have mostly forgotten about their neighboring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; and many more.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

The Barnes & Noble Review
If you've always wanted to throw back a few drinks with spacefaring extraterrestrials, look no further than Larry Niven's The Draco Tavern, a collection of 27 short stories revolving around an infamous interplanetary watering hole that puts Star Wars' Mos Eisley cantina to shame.

Rick Schumann, owner of the Draco Tavern situated in a spaceport at Mount Forel in Siberia, has stories aplenty for anyone who has the time to listen. In "Playground Earth," the tavern experiences some bad press and is bombed by xenophobic terrorists. While Schumann recovers from injuries sustained in the attack, the operation is shut down -- and dozens of bored aliens turned overly curious tourists converge on an unsuspecting human populace.

The tavern's entrepreneurial owner receives some potentially priceless information in "The Schumann Computer" -- designs for the galaxy's most intelligent computer -- but after the omnipotent construct is built, he realizes that knowing everything isn't all it's cracked up to be. In "The Subject Is Closed," a priest discusses the possibility of the afterlife with a Chirpsithra -- an ancient race of giant lobster-like aliens -- and comes away with a much-changed view of his religion.

In the book's introduction, Niven states that he dreamed up the spaceport bar as a setting to deal with the big questions -- God, the fate of humankind, immortality, artificial intelligences, the destiny of the universe, interspecies commerce, etc. -- and that's exactly what he does in The Draco Tavern, a short story collection that is practically supersaturated with diverse themes and concepts. A must-read. Paul Goat Allen

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 2005 Reed Business Information.

From the Publisher

A must for Nivenites and just plain good reading for everyone else.” —Booklist on The Draco Tavern

“There are wise elder races and there are scamsters and folks who raise interesting questions. In some ways, the object-lesson stories remind one of pundits' political columns…. Thought provoking.” —San Diego Union-Tribune on The Draco Tavern

“Brilliant . . . These stories are best taken a few at a time to savor their inventiveness.” —Publishers Weekly on The Draco Tavern

“Reads more like an episodic novel…. There's joy and sadness and everything in between in these stories—which seem to have devised as vehicles for Niven to explore a wide variety of ideas and also happen to be about what it means to be human. One of the ways in which we learn about who we are is to see what we are not, and in this book there are many examples of what humans are not.” —Romantic Times Bookclub on The Draco Tavern

JUN/JUL 07 - AudioFile

Bartender as storyteller is a tried-and-true literary device. Niven offers up a number of short stories and musings about the aliens visiting a tavern in 2030. An interplanetary watering hole provides plenty of material for sci-fi fans; the stories are full of the unique perspectives of these travelers and their accounts of their home planets. Rick Schumann is characterized as the classic bartender by narrator Tom Weiner. He is inventive in his characterizations of the visitors who engage Schumann over the bar. Weiner gives the same attention to short pieces that he does to full stories and provides continuity without being overbearing. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169897333
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

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