The Bitter Pill (1974) is a science fiction novel by Australian writer A. Bertram Chandler.
A. Bertram Chandler's science fiction short story "The Bitter Pill" was published in the June 1970 issue of Vision of Tomorrow.
[3] In a future Australia a powerful government administration, concerned by the growing number of "old" people, tags all over 45 as senior citizens, forcing them to relinguish their jobs and restricting their privileges.
In The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer William Noonan found the author's "fertile imagination" helped provide a novel whose "overall result is absorbing".
McGowan noted that "dramatic tension is very much lacking" and that the "principal characters are no more cardboard than is usual in most sf".