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