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A Lego mothership to colonize space (pictures)

The Marquis is a super-detailed, 56-inch-long spaceship fashioned of Lego bricks that comes with its own sci-fi backstory.

Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
Tim Hornyak
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1 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

The Marquis

Many Lego fanatics are also crazy about science fiction. But Peter Mowry combined both passions by spending the past eight months building a spaceship he imagined for a science fiction novel that features a race called the Hexans.

The Hexan ship is called the Marquis, and in this illustration it's seen orbiting the planet Arkite, the homeworld of the Guardians.

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2 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

The Marquis diagram

"During their period of outreach," Mowry writes, "the Hexans delivered thousands of agents and artifacts to nearby galaxies, but the results were not at all what they had hoped. Cultures they encountered were much too primitive to be considered peers, so the Hexans adopted a policy of tolerance and noninterference toward them."
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3 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

The Marquis sketch

"All these are from my many sketch books," Mowry writes. "All are from my one idea of my sci-fi novel I've been trying to write for the past 10 years plus."
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4 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

The Marquis in Lego

Built of Lego, the Marquis is so big it has to be suspended from tubing. Weighing some 50 pounds and standing 56 inches tall, it's elaborately detailed and was recently shown off in Chicago.
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5 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

Under construction

The Marquis was built with an estimated 16,500 Lego bricks. It's seen here after its back and front have been joined. Mowry decided to use 50-pound fishing line to suspend it from some tubing.
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6 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

The Marquis closeup

It took Mowry about eight months to build The Marquis, which consists of hundreds of Lego bricks. He's planning to add more Lego builds of craft from his fictional universe, and of course finish the novel, which three friends are helping him with.
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7 of 7 Peter Mowry/Flickr

At Brickworld

Mowry's The Marquis spaceship was shown off at Brickworld 2013 in Chicago recently, where it picked up the Best Spacecraft Award despite intense competition.

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