The Bitter Pill

A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984)
Arthur Bertram Chandler was a British-Australian science fiction author born in Aldershot, England in 1912. He sailed the world in everything from tramp steamers to troop transports and emigrated to Australia in 1956, where he commanded merchant ships under Australian and New Zealand flags until his retirement in 1975. Chandler's first published work was "This Means War!" for Astounding in May 1944 and he concentrated on short fiction for nearly two decades, often writing under various pseudonyms. He won the Ditmar Award four times and the A Bertram Chandler Award for lifetime achievement in sf in Australia has been presented in his memory since 1992.