Chain Reading

Larry Niven’s latest book, The Draco Tavern, arrested my attention for the same reason most books do…it has a fantastic cover. The artist is Stephan Martiniere. Martiniere’s work has graced a number of science fiction and fantasy book covers lately and his modern techniques remind me so much of the classic science fiction illustrations on books that captured my attention as a child. Each time I see one of his covers I lovingly pick up the book wondering if the story is as good as the cover art. I had less to worry about in the case of Larry Niven. Niven is an award winning author of a series of books centered around a place called Ringworld…and I haven’t read a one. My one and only experience with Larry Niven is an excellent book called A World Out of Time, which has the distiniction of being the first book I ever bought as a kid from a used bookstore and is one I come back to every few years as I enjoy it so much.

The Draco Tavern is a series of short stories, 27 in number, that span the last three decades of Niven’s work. The stories center around, you guessed it, the Draco Tavern. Larry Niven points out in his introduction that the Mos Eisley Spaceport in Star Wars is part of a “hoary old tradition”, one that he felt he could put to use to discuss a number of topics in short story form. The tales told in The Draco Tavern are told by the bartender, Rick Schumann, who built the tavern on Mount Forel in Siberia after the appearance of the first aliens on earth. The stories are set in the 2030’s and Schumann is the only consistent character in each story. The Chirpsithra are a group of aliens who lay claim to having conquered all red dwarf systems in the universe and in discovering Earth they now shuttle various alien entities across the universe to visit this new planet and its race of interesting yet underdeveloped people. Rich Schumann does what any enterprising young man might do, he sets up a bar that serves all comers, maintaining a stock of food and drinkstuffs that defies explanation for an ever-growing number of aliens who defy description.

The Draco Tavern short stories are each individual, self contained tales and yet they build on each other in roughly the same way that episodes of shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation do. There is a definite progression of time and there are things that happen in previous stories that crop up in later tales. Larry Niven is a truly talented writer and this is very evident when you realize that there is almost no deep characterization in these tales and yet you find yourself really liking and connecting with Rick Schumann. As a bartender for the only interspecies tavern on earth Schumann is not only Earth’s ambassador to the alien races but he is the reader’s as well. Through these 27 stories you are allowed to meet any number of interesting alien races seen through the eyes of a man who is very much like you and me. There is not a great deal of action in these stories, they are tales told around the bar, but don’t let the lack of action turn you off, these stories are good. They are also very different. In reading the first two or three stories I was puzzled by how Niven seemed to end each one rather abruptly. I soon got used to this and ended up really enjoying the format, especially as I realized that the connectedness of each story make it read almost like a novel.

If you are a fan of the type of science fiction that does not have to center around explosions and interstellar wars then I really believe you’ll like this set of vignettes into the life of Rich Schumann and his most interesting watering hole. I found myself sadly disappointed when the book ended as I really felt a connection to Schumann and wanted his adventures to continue. Hopefully Larry Niven will revisit this world in future short stories. My only complaint about the book at all is that the last 3 or 4 stories were told out of chronological order (in the order he wrote them instead, I believe) and it felt odd to have them ordered that way as they were the most interconnected of all the short stories. That being said there wasn’t a disappointing story in the bunch and I am so glad that I have finally read my second Larry Niven book. Pull up a chair, order a beverage, and drink in the sights and sounds of the odd, yet somehow familiar, atmosphere of The Draco Tavern.