When a tremendous spacecraft took orbit around the 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 people grew conspicuously rich from secrets they learned
from talking to the aliens. One of these men, Rick Schumann,
established a tavern catering to all of the various species
of visiting aliens, a place he named the Draco Tavern.
From the mind of #1 New York Times bestselling author
Larry Niven come twenty-six tales and vignettes from this
interplanetary gathering place, collected for the first time
in one volume, including:
“The Subject Is Closed”: 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”: 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”: In this previously
unpublished tale, a group of aliens who call Mars and its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.