Customer Reviews
Brings together all Niven's "Spaceport Bar" type stories - By: Marshall Lord, 25 Jan 2008 
This enjoyable paperback brings togetherin one volume all of Niven's "Alien Cantina" type stories describing conversations with aliensin the bar of the Draco Tavern.
The main warning which has to be given is that most of these stories have been previously published elsewhere. If you've previously read most of Niven's other short story collections such as "Limits" you may already have read three quarters of this book - including the short story "Limits" itself. However, the last three or four stories are new - I particularly commend "Losing Mars" which has not previously been published.
The basic premise is thatin the near future star travelling aliens make contact with humans, sending shuttles down for R&R stopsin Siberia. The Draco Tavern is a bar which is established for them under UN auspices & each of the stories represents a conversation with aliensin that bar.
Niven does not attempt to find a way round the lightspeed limit imposed by the theory of relativity. Asin Anderson's classic "Tao Zero", orin Haldeman's "Forever War" universe but even more so, the interstellar travellers who call at the Draco Tavern universe have spent what seems like years & centuries to the rest of the universe travelling at relativistic speed, e.g. velocities close to the speed of light. Because of time dilation these travellers have hardly aged at all during those voyages.
Some of those aliens who have travelled the furthest distances were born literally hundreds of millions of years ago, so far back that their species has significantly evolvedin the meantime & they can remember visiting earth millions of years before the dinosaurs.
This gives Niven's characters the opportunity to discuss issues like God, life after death, biological & artificial intelligence, from the viewpoint of sentient beings who have seen large parts of the universe over a very long period of time. His speculations are always entertaining & often thought provoking.
These stories do not have the sweep or power of Niven's "Known Space" novels or the vast panoramic works he wrote jointly with Jerry Pournelle & others. They are short stories - how could they possibly compete with the kind of detailed worldbuilding he puts into his novels? I can't help feeling that some of the other reviewers are damning this book with faint praise for being a short story collection & not a novel.
If I could give this four & a half stars I would it's perhaps not up there with the very best of Niven's writing but it is very good indeed.
Consistently entertaining, but lightweight - By: T. D. Welsh, 13 Jul 2007 At his best, Larry Niven is second to nonein the SF field. When he gets some good, original ideas, & takes the time to crank up a solid plot & a set of convincing characters, the result is something like "World of Ptavvs", "Protector", or the epic Ringworld tetralogy. In my view, those books are hard to faultin any way if you like hard SF.
"The Draco Tavern" is something different: a confection of relatively lightweight short stories, loosely tiedin to a common theme. It is eventful, sometimes provocative, & always whimsically amusing. But it never threatens to grip your intellectual or dramatic interestin anything like the same way as Niven's novels. This is partly because of the flimsiness of the underlying premise. In the near future, the Earth is visited by a race of superhuman aliens, the Chirpsithra, whose vast starships periodically bring a menagerie of intelligent beings from faraway worlds. Rick Schumann, the narrator, is the owner & chief bartender of the Draco Tavern, a bar specifically designed as a meeting-place for aliens of all kinds. That implies the ability to provide all sorts of different environments, each with its own pressure, atmosphere, & radiation levels.
Presumably the whole scenario occurred to Nivenin a visual flash: a barin which all sorts of exotic alien lifeforms rub shoulders, rather like thosein the Star Wars movies. A multi-talented human bartender flits from booth to booth, carrying regular cocktails, Irish coffee, & whatever weird potions suit each species. The Chirpsithra do not eat or drinkin the Tavern, preferring to administer electric shocks to themselves with a device called a sparker. The hook liesin Rick's conversations with the Chirpsithra & others,in which he learns otherwise unknowable facts & techniques. How to build an intelligent computer, the real reason why stars go nova, whether there is life after death (and if so, for whom); and, on one especially memorable occasion, what the inhabitants of Earth were like when it had a reducing atmosphere. (Some Chirpsithra are really, really old).
These stories are great fun, but there is something fundamentally insubstantial about them. The whole idea of the Draco Tavern is unlikely; would intelligent aliens who live for millions of years really want to sitin a bar & drink, exactly like primitive, short-lived humans? What would the Chirpsithra get out of talking to us? Besides, Niven hardly scratches the surface of the key question his scenario raises: what effect would alien contact have on humans & their culture? Needless to say, the whole Draco Tavern world is radically incompatible with the Known Space universe with its protectors, Puppeteers, & kzinti.
Hence the four stars instead of five. This is a good book, but not a brilliant one. It will amuse & entertain, but the Chirpsithra not lingerin the mind like Protectors, Puppeteers, kzinti, or Moties. Niven has not let himself down - this is just what he likes to doin between novels, & the short story format has very definite limits.
The best pub in the world? - By: D. J. Plews, 18 Feb 2006 At last, a collection of Larry Niven's Draco Tavern stories. A pubin Siberia where aliens have a drink & tell tall tales. The Chirpsithra claim to "rule" the Galaxy, rather benevolently though. The stories are all told from the point of view of Rick Schumann, owner & barman of the Draco Tavern.
The early stories have the bite of cautionary tales like his first "Tales of Known Space" short stories. In "The Schumann Computer" the frightening consequences of ultimate knowledge are explored.
The later stories sadly seem to lack that cutting edge a bit, but "Loosing Mars" does have a funny end, almost.
