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![]() First edition cover | |
Author | Larry Niven |
---|---|
Cover artist | Stephan Martinière |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Published | November 28, 2006 (Tor Books) |
Media type | |
ISBN | 978-0-7653-4771-8 |
The Draco Tavern is a 2006 collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Larry Niven concerning the activities of Rick Schumann, the bartender of the Draco Tavern.
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.
The Chirpsithra stand 11 feet tall with salmon-pink exoskeletons. 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 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. [1]
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.
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.
Laurence van Cott Niven is an American science fiction writer. His 1970 novel Ringworld won the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. With Jerry Pournelle he wrote The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and Lucifer's Hammer (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave him the 2015 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
Known Space is the fictional setting of about a dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories by American writer Larry Niven. It has also become a shared universe in the spin-off Man-Kzin Wars anthologies. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) catalogs all works set in the fictional universe that includes Known Space under the series name Tales of Known Space, which was the title of a 1975 collection of Niven's short stories. The first-published work in the series, which was Niven's first published piece was "The Coldest Place", in the December 1964 issue of If magazine, edited by Frederik Pohl. This was the first-published work in the 1975 collection.
The Ringworld science fiction role-playing game was published by Chaosium in 1984, using the Basic Role-Playing system for its rules and Larry Niven's Ringworld novels as a setting.
The Forge of God is a 1987 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. Earth faces destruction when an inscrutable and overwhelming alien form of life attacks.
"Neutron Star" is an English language science fiction short story by American writer Larry Niven. It was originally published in the October 1966 issue of Worlds of If. It was later reprinted in the collection of the same name and Crashlander. The story is set in Niven's fictional Known Space universe. It is notable for including a neutron star before their existence was widely known.
Inconstant Moon is a science fiction short story collection by American author Larry Niven that was published in 1973. "Inconstant Moon" is also a 1971 short story that is included in the collection. The title refers to "O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon", a quote from the balcony scene in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The collection was assembled from the US collections The Shape of Space and All the Myriad Ways.
Manifold: Space is a science fiction book by British author Stephen Baxter, first published in the United Kingdom in 2000, then released in the United States in 2001. It is the second book of the Manifold series and examines another possible solution to the Fermi paradox. Although it is in no sense a sequel to the first book it contains a number of the same characters, notably protagonist Reid Malenfant, and similar artefacts. The Manifold series contains four books, Manifold: Time, Manifold: Space, Manifold: Origin, and Phase Space.
World of Ptavvs is a science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1966 and set in his Known Space universe. It was Niven's first published novel and is based on a 1965 magazine story of the same name.
"The Star" is a science fiction short story by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. It appeared in the science fiction magazine Infinity Science Fiction in 1955 and won the Hugo Award in 1956. It is collected in Clarke's 1958 book of short stories The Other Side of the Sky, and was reprinted in the January 1965 issue of Short Story International as the lead-off story.
"Flatlander" is an English language science fiction short story by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1967. It is the third in the series of Known Space stories featuring crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer. The short story was originally published in Worlds of If, March 1967, and reprinted in Neutron Star, and Crashlander.
"The Borderland of Sol" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Larry Niven. It is the fifth in the Known Space series of stories about crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer.
Playgrounds of the Mind is a collection of short stories by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1991. It is the sequel to N-Space.
Limits is a collection of short stories and essays by science fiction author Larry Niven, originally published in 1985.
Convergent Series is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1979. It is also the name of one of the short stories in the collection. The collection reprints the stories originally appearing in the 1969 collection The Shape of Space that were not part of the Known Space series. The collection includes newer stories, both fantasy and science fiction, some of which are in the Draco's Tavern series, none of which are in the Known Space series. The collection won the 1980 Locus Award for Best Single Author Collection.
The Sky People is an alternate history science fiction novel by American writer S. M. Stirling. It was first published by Tor Books in hardcover in November 2006, with a book club edition co-published with the Science Fiction Book Club following in December of the same year. Tor issued paperback, ebook, and trade paperback editions in October 2007, April 2010, and May 2010 respectively. Audiobook editions were published by Tantor Media in January 2007.
"The Handicapped" is a science fiction short story by Larry Niven, originally published in the December 1967 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction as "Handicap". Set in the Known Space universe, the story introduces the Grogs, the sessile but sentient inhabitants of the planet Down.
The Best of Larry Niven is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories written by Larry Niven and edited by Jonathan Strahan, first published in hardcover by Subterranean Press in December 2010. The pieces were originally published between 1965 and 2000 in the magazines The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, If, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Galaxy Magazine, Knight, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Vertex: the Magazine of Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Omni and Playboy, the anthologies Dangerous Visions, Quark/4, Ten Tomorrows, and What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, the novel The Magic Goes Away, and the collections All the Myriad Ways and The Flight of the Horse.
Aliens! is a themed anthology of science fiction short works edited by American writers Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann, the first in a series of themed anthologies. It was first published in paperback by Pocket Books in April 1980. Subsequent volumes in the series were published by Ace Books.
Semiosis is a 2018 science fiction novel by American writer and translator Sue Burke. It is her debut novel and is the first book of her Semiosis Duology series. It was first published in February 2018 in the United States by Tor Books, and in August 2018 in the United Kingdom by HarperVoyager. The book was translated into French by Florence Bury, and published in France in September 2019 by Albin Michel.