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The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven
01/06/2006 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub: TOR/Forge. 304 page hardback. Price: $24.95 (US), $33.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30863-0. Buy The Draco Tavern in the USA - or Buy The Draco Tavern in the UK  check out website: www.tor.com
The concept of a watering hole as a place where stories are told is well established. Ghost story writers such as M.R. James used the idea of a gentleman's club where members would meet and regale each other with tall stories, often related as having happened to a friend of a friend. It provided the right kind of intimate atmosphere for such stories to be aired. A few drinks to lubricate the imagination and an audience to enrapture. In later years, the club gave way to the tavern or bar. The tale-spinning was no longer confined to the gentle classes. Everyone had a tale to tell. One of the earliest in the Science Fiction field was 'Tales From The White Hart' by Arthur C. Clarke. (He may have got the name for his tavern from the White Hart pub in London which was an early meeting place for SF fans). Later, Spider Robinson set stories in Callahan's Bar where space-farer's passing through told of their adventures to whoever would listen.
Larry Niven began his series of bar tales in 1977. In the 2030s, an alien race made contact with Earth. A space port was built in a remote part of Siberia, a staging post for interstellar travellers. Rick Schumann built a tavern to serve the visitors. The main aliens are the Chirpsithra as they run the interstellar spaceships. Because the distances and the length of voyages are so great, places like Earth are merely way stations. Each ship does not expect to return. Visitors may leave with the ship that brought them or stay a while, leaving on a later one. Thus there is a regular turnover of aliens - individuals as well as species. There are human visitors from other parts of Earth but they are rare and as this is a security zone, they need a good reason, such as research, for being allowed to visit.
The stories were written between 1977 and 2006 with some appearing to be new to this volume. The tavern itself also evolves. It has been destroyed at least once. The Draco Tavern is not just a place where tall tales are related, although it does occur.
The first story, 'The Subject Is Closed' is one such. At the prompting of a visiting priest, the Chirpsithra tell the story of the mass suicide of a race they call the Sheegupt.
At other times, Schumann has to be a diplomat and help solve interspecies dilemmas. In 'The Heights' a man accuses two of the visiting aliens of attacking his children. On their home-world, their ancestors were predators and they still need to go through a form of hunt to stimulate an appetite. They compromise by lifting a victim into the air, flying a couple of circles and putting them down again gently. Schumann has to come up with a solution that will satisfy all parties.
On occasion, Schumann gets strange invitations. In 'Table Manners', he is invited to hunt with wolf-like aliens called the Folk. In 'Lost', he accepts a pleasure jaunt in an alien spacecraft.
There are a lot of good short stories in this volume. Niven is excellent at devising alien species and giving then strange characteristics. Although the stories can be read in sequence, it is also a good book for dipping in to.
Pauline Morgan
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