Vintage “The Sand Pebbles" Richard McKenna Hand Signed 3X5 Card For Sale

Up for sale "The Sand Pebbles" Richard McKenna Hand Signed 3X5 Card. 

ES-3932

Richard

Milton McKenna (May

9, 1913 – November 1, 1964) was an American sailor and novelist. He was best

known for his historical novel, The Sand Pebbles which tells the story of an American

sailor serving aboard a gunboat on the Chinese Yangtze River in 1925. McKenna was born in Mountain Home, Idaho, on

May 9, 1913.Seeking more opportunities than could be found in such a rural part

of the country at the height of the Great Depression, McKenna joined the U.S. Navy in 1931 at the age of 18. He served for 22

years, including 10 years of active sea duty. He served in World War II and the Korean War and retired shortly afterwards as a Chief Machinist's Mate. Because

of the benefits of the GI Bill, McKenna was able to attend

college at the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he studied creative writing. He also

married a librarian, Eva, whom he met at the college. McKenna

began his writing career publishing science fiction, and starting in 1958 he regularly attended

the annual Milford Writer's Workshop for

science fiction writers. "He had enormous talent," writes his

colleague Ben Bova in the book Notes to a Science Fiction

Writer. His first science fiction story "Casey Agonistes"

immediately established him as a writer to be watched when it appeared in the

September 1958 issue of The Magazine

of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Only a handful of his science

fiction tales were published during his lifetime, but after his death several

more appeared posthumously. McKenna's major work was The Sand Pebbles (1962), a 597-page novel later made

into the well-known 1966 film of the same title.

The protagonist was an enlisted career sailor on a U.S. 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 after 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. Shortly

after the movie deal was announced, McKenna appeared on the television quiz

program “To Tell The Truth”, receiving one vote from the celebrity panel. 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.