Sometimes when you sketch you screw things up. This was meant to be a drawing of a ship called Liana, which features in a half-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 find there were only four pods. So I changed the 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 an accurate descriptor (the propeller-thing spins like a demon when the star drive kicks in) and a thinly-veiled reference to The Wizard of Oz.
Graham Edwards 