The Draco Tavern

The Draco Tavern

First edition cover
Author	Larry Niven
Cover artist	Stephan Martinière
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Published	November 28, 2006 (Tor Books)
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
ISBN	978-0-7653-4771-8

The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven is a 2006 collection of science fiction short stories concerning the activities of Rick Schumann, the bartender of the Draco Tavern.

Fictional background story

The Draco tavern is located in Siberia, near the Mount Forel spaceport. The tavern was created after a race of sentient aliens called Chirpsithra landed on Earth. They stand 11 feet tall with salmon pink exoskeletons. All of them appear to be female. Their equivalent of alcohol's effect on humans is a mild electric current. They originated on tidally locked planets around red dwarf 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.

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, thus it is not a Draco Tavern omnibus; there have 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.

Short stories included

• "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"

External links

• The Draco Tavern title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Draco Tavern series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Review at SFReviews.Net