The Draco Tavern Book

The best of these might become Larry Niven's literary immortality

These stories date from 1977 to 2006, and feature the very long-lived Chirpsithra, the masters of the galaxy's red-dwarf planets, and the owner-operators of the great interstellar liners that occasionally stop at Earth. The chirps mingle with the locals, and an amazing variety of other star-travelers, at the fabled Draco Tavern near their shuttle landing-ground at Mt. Forel, Siberia.

So pull up a really high barstool, so you can look the eleven-foot tall chirps in the eye, and order a Tee tee hatch nex ool-compatible cocktail from the Draco's amazingly versatile barkeep....

Boy, are the Draco stories good. Age shall not wither, nor custom stale, the best of these remarkable vignettes: "The Green Marauder," "War Movie," "Limits." They might well become his literary immortality.

And some of the newer ones might well join the classics. The collection spans 1977 to 2006, including one or two first published here. There are minor retcons and continuity fixes, which help the flow. Check it out.

TOC:
Here's a sample story from the collection: "Smut Talk" (2000), 3 stars:
And another, "The Missing Mass" (2000), a neat little explanation for that cosmological mystery:

And here's a new-to-me Draco vignette, "The Artists" (2011): . Clever & quick, 3.5 stars.