Future Floating Torso Shows Up in a Novel


Confederate Colonel Luke Tiernan Brien, whose ghost supposedly haunts his old home in Urbana, Frederick County, also has the distinction of showing up as a fictional character in a popular alternate-history novel.

How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove, published in 1997, won that year’s Sidewise Award for alternate history. One of countless fictional speculations asking, “What if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?” – a speculation that entertains mostly White men – How Few Remain is the first novel in Turtledove’s 11-volume “Southern Victory” series.

The not-yet-spectral Colonel Brien appears on Pages 77-78, still a loyal aide to Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and fighting the Union once again, this time in the Second Mexican War of 1881:

Most of two decades of garrison duty had laid a heavy patina of routine over the dashing young trooper he’d once been, but, like a lot of the other veteran officers in Stuart’s force, he was starting to shine up once more. …

Colonel Brien smiled, showing teeth stained brown by the plug of tobacco that swelled one cheek. “Beg your pardon, sir, but we’ve been soldiering together for a long time, and I don’t reckon cautious is a word I’d put together with your name up till now.”

“Maybe I’m getting old,” Stuart said. Then he grinned again, and barked a couple of times. “Or maybe I’m learning a new trick.”

“Now you’re talking, sir,” Tiernan Brien said enthusiastically.

It’s not much of a role, frankly, compared to the floating, disembodied head and torso assigned to Brien in the legends of Landon House.

Sources:

“How Few Remain.” Harry Turtledove Wiki. https://turtledove.fandom.com/wiki/How_Few_Remain. Accessed 19 Nov. 2021.

“Luke Tiernan Brien.” Harry Turtledove Wiki. https://turtledove.fandom.com/wiki/Luke_Tiernan_Brien. Accessed 19 Nov. 2021.

Turtledove, Harry. How Few Remain. Del Rey, 1997.

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