Sometimes when you sketch you screw things up. This was meant to be a drawing of a ship called Liana, which features in an abandoned manuscript that’s currently gathering dust on my hard drive. Just before finishing the sketch, I decided to print the name of the ship on those pod-like things running down the side … only to discover I’d drawn four pods instead of five. So, I changed the ship’s name to Lana. Actually, I like that more. Call it serendipity. Or a flagrant disregard for continuity.
That propeller-like thing on the back is the ship’s star drive, by the way. In the story it’s called the “Twister”. I daresay it’s a name that’s been used before in science fiction, but I like the happy collision of it being not only an accurate descriptor (the propeller-thing spins like a demon when the star drive kicks in), but also a thinly-veiled reference to The Wizard of Oz.
Graham Edwards 