Richard McKenna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Milton McKenna (1913- 1964) was an American sailor and writer.
McKenna served his 22 years in the Navy, retiring shortly after the Korean War as a Chief Machinists Mate. He took advantage of the GI bill to go to college, where he studied creative writing. He attended University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and, while there, he fell in love with, and married, one of the librarians.
His most well-known work was The Sand Pebbles (1962), made into the well-known 1966 film of the same title. The hero was an enlisted career sailor on a US Navy river gunboat named the San Pablo in China during the 1920s. McKenna himself served aboard a river gunboat on the Yangtze Patrol, but about ten years following the events in his novel.
He began his writing career publishing science fiction. His posthumously published short story "The Secret Place" won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1966 and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1967. Casey Agonistes and Other Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (1973) collects the title story and four other short works.
