Author’s Note - written for Round one of ForbiddenPlanet’s smackdown SFSD 7.0

Prompts : Set in an astro-bar, any where as long as it’s in orbit. Include the song “House Rules”.  Choose a Sci-Fi sub-genre.  Title “One Night at ...your astro-bar”

One Night at The Pub

Sub-Genre / Comic SF

Far out, in the recently charted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy, lies a pub.  Well, to be more accurate it spins slowly in space, enclosed in a small glass sphere, complete with its own gravitational field and oxygen breathing atmosphere.  The sphere is not really made of glass of course, but it’s transparent, so you get the idea.

The bottom half of the sphere is painted an earthy red, but the top half is clear, so that you can see the stars in all their glory.  When it was first built, the entire sphere was transparent.   Although the more adventurous thought this a great idea, the publican soon got tired of cleaning up the messes caused by people who didn’t.  For some reason, the miniscule coat of paint seemed to make them feel much safer.

The pub sits in the centre of the sphere more or less attached to the bottom, or top, depending which direction you approach from, surrounded by a beer garden where you can sit on chairs which are firmly welded to the inside of the sphere, and watch the stars.

The pub itself,  is the spitting image of an English pub, some say it was actually rescued intact from the Earth before that planet was destroyed by the Vogons to make way for the bypass.  Others insist it’s merely a very good copy.  In any case, it is built of bricklike material, with white walls inside, black beams across the ceiling and a polished wooden bar.  Small booths abound, complete with benches stuffed with fake horsehair to sit on and wobbly tables to rest your drinks on. 

It is the last place to stop for a drink before you get onto the bypass and are whizzed off at tremendous speeds around the galaxy.  Nobody knows exactly who owns it, some say Angus, the android barman, others that it’s a multi-planetary consortium, but there’s no doubt as to who is in charge.  Angus has been there as long as anyone can remember, tall and humanlike with longish reddish hair and green eyes, only the shiny metal of his right hand giving his true origins away.  He keeps the Pub exactly the way he likes it and doesn’t hesitate to invite anyone who doesn’t like it that way, to try somewhere else.  Of course, the fact that there isn’t anywhere else for several trillion miles is hardly his problem, as he is only too happy to point out.

“It’s a fucking Pub,” he is fond of saying.  “Not a fucking nightclub or a dance hall or a karaoke bar!  It’s where people come to have a quiet drink and chat to their mates.” 

As well as a constant stream of transients, there is a small group of regulars who can be found there most nights, drinking their beer, or whisky, and chatting to any one who sits still long enough to listen and hopefully buy the next round.  If you are lucky enough, on a night in The Pub, you’ll hear some stories like these ...