Richard McKenna - Writing Career

Writing Career

McKenna began his writing career publishing science fiction. "He had enormous talent", writes his colleague Ben Bova in the book Notes to a Science Fiction Writer, "and his first science fiction story 'Casey Agonistes' immediately established him as a writer to be watched."

McKenna's best known work was The Sand Pebbles (1962), made into the well-known 1966 film of the same title. The protagonist 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 and of more modern construction (San Pablo was an ancient gunboat seized from the Spanish in 1898). The Sand Pebbles won the $10,000 1963 Harper Prize Novel and was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

McKenna's 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: "Hunter Come Home," "The Secret Place," "Mine Own Ways," and "Fiddler's Green." The collections The Sons of Martha and The Left Handed Monkey Wrench were also published posthumously.