SOLVED. Sci fi short story series by one author set in a bar with the bartender as the MC includes aliens [s]

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Read at least 20 years ago, and could be even older than that. The MC is a barkeep (possibly owner, but that's I'm hazy on) of a bar in NYC. Earth has finally been contacted by aliens and there are a few hanging out in his bar. He has a waitress or female barkeep that he has some kind of romantic interest in, but I don't remember if anything every happens.

One of the stories has an alien walk into the bar and we discover that his people had dropped him off to "walk the world" type thing. He couldn't be noticed unless he wanted to be. I don't remember why he was wandering around incognito, but he was.

Another one had a female alien who looked nothing like the others of her species. She was wearing some kind of armour or something, and he found out that she had left her home world to "tour the universe" and supposedly had been almost all the way around the galaxy--and had been traveling for something along the lines of 250,000 years. Her species had continued to evolve, and were not totally different from when she had left. (I think that she was using a near light speed transport, but that part could be totally wrong.)

And a third part that I remember is a new alien species shows up to see if they can trade with the Earth and they want us to build them something to help them move on. It's up for debate in the U.N. or whatever has taken over as the planetary government after the first aliens landed. One of the aliens that the MC is kind of friendly with tells him that we should really build the whatever it is. And then tells him to have the astronomers check the back trail of the aliens. That there will be a LOT of nova suns on their back trail, since, if they can't get the whatever it is, they blow up the planetary star to enable them to move on. The MC passes that message along to someone in the government and the very next day they pass the resolution to built the thingamajig.

My memories of this are kind of tenuous and that's about all I remember. No real idea on when I read this--except that I think it was in the 80's or maybe 90's. Definitely before the 2ks.

[Kris]

Callahan's series by Spider Robinson just came to mind (re: bar/tavern), but I haven't read it. About how long is a short sci fi story?

[Andy]

Larry Niven's "Draco Tavern" series (collected here The Draco Tavern is the one about the bartender who regularly gets alien visitors. The female alien story is called "The Green Marauder"

The other story (with the novas) is actually not in the Draco Tavern series - but is by Larry Niven - it's called "The Fourth Profession" The Fourth Profession

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Andy wrote: "Larry Niven's "Draco Tavern" series (collected here The Draco Tavern"

I see Andy beat me to it (and it is definitely 4th profession, minus the parts of the other story that you have mixed in).

Might want to mention that the predominant aliens in DT series are from M-class stars (vs. humans at G). Because about 76% of the main-sequence stars in the solar neighborhood are class M stars. They're either from tidally-locked planets, or not. So a lot of action going on there, not so much for the weird aliens, like humans.

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Yes, the Fourth Profession is the one story that I remember. I've ordered a copy of the The Draco Tavern and will see if that's the other stories. But I thought that I'd read all of them in the same book. And I didn't think that the tavern was in Siberia, but, hey, it's been at least 20, and more probably 30 years since I read them. Back when I was in my Niven phase (some time around the publishing of Ringworld) I read everything by him I could get my gubby little paws on.

In the mean time I've moved this down to Possibly Solved and if that's it, I'll move it to Solved

[Andy]

I'm not sure Niven mentioned the Siberia background in every story.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Ann aka Iftcan wrote: "But I thought that I'd read all of them in the same book"

"Fourth Profession" and two Draco Tavern stories are in this book:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3...

But not "The Green Marauder".

[Ann aka Iftcan]

While I don't remember 90% of the stories in The Draco Tavern I'm going to call this solved, since I had most of the stories that I remembered. But Larry Niven--gotta love the man, am I right or am I right?

[Andy]

You are right!