Siduri

@msiduri (5687)

United States

Joined myLot 9 years ago

A retired pharmacy technician, Msiduri has been writing book and movie reviews online since 2000 at sites such as Epinions, Bubblews and Persona Papers

Discussions (390)

Responses (1259)

Comments (4038)

Mentions (2127)

Followers (119)

Siduri's Discussions

Grief

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 18 Jun 17

My sister-in-law—call her Jane—lost her sister a few days ago. It was not a surprise and was, indeed, a long time coming. Jane’s sister—call her Rhea—was born with a condition that affects the myelin coating of the nerves. It is...

7 responses •

6 people

Review: Science Fiction: "A World is Born" by Leigh Brackett

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 1 Jun 17

In the aftermath of the Second Interplanetary War, thousands of veterans remain in prison, mostly on trivial offences. The Prison Authority won’t let them go because they have no jobs, no homes, and no money awaiting...

science fiction

3 responses •

3 people

Review: Science Fiction: "The People of the Crater" by Andre Norton

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 29 May 17

Six months and three days after the signing of the Peace of Shanghai ended the great War of 1965-1970, Captain Garin Featherstone sits on a park bench in New York City staring at his worn shoes. He’d trained to fly fighter planes...

lost civilization

science fiction

4 responses •

5 people

Review: Science Fiction: "2 B R 0 2 B" by Kurt Vonnegut

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 27 May 17

“Everything was perfectly swell,” the reader is told. Disease, poverty, slums, wars, insane asylums, disability (author Kurt Vonnegut uses the then approved of word “cripples”), and prisons are all things of the past. Death,...

science fiction

4 responses •

4 people

Review: Science Fiction: "Project Mastodon" by Clifford D. Simak

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 26 May 17

The secretary of state has never heard of Mastodonia. Mr. Hudson, its representative, has had a hard time convincing the staff he was in earnest. “And are you, Mr Hudson?” the secretary asks. “It's a new nation,” Hudson...

science fiction

2 responses •

2 people

Review: Science Fiction: "The Judas Valley" by Gerald Vance

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 23 May 17

Captain Peter Wayne call his girlfriend, the lovely Sherri James to let her know he’ll have to break her date. He’s received orders to ship out. Sherrie was about to call. She’s received orders, too. She’ll be shipping about...

science fiction

2 responses •

2 people

Book Review: "Pet Peeve" by Piers Anthony

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 22 May 17

This is the twenty-ninth offering in the Xanth fantasy series by Piers Anthony. It is (as the doomed reader will soon find out) replete with bad puns and juvenile sexuality. Some have gone so far as to accuse Anthony’s of writings...

3 responses •

3 people

Review: Science Fiction: "The Hunters" by Joseph Samachson

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 21 May 17

Miss Burton has been tasked with watching thirty girls, all between the ages of nine and eleven, on their field trip to the zoo. She is unaware of the two men watching the group. She’s too busy confiscating a water pistol—before...

science fiction

3 responses •

3 people

Review: Science Fiction: "An Ounce of Cure" by Alan Nourse

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 20 May 17

Fifty-five-year-old James Wheatley’s toe has been hurting on and off for about six months. Not until the past week has it gotten bad enough for him to go to the doctor, and just the thought of it is giving him palpitations. The...

2 responses •

3 people

A Phishing Email. Yeah, Bite Me.

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 17 May 17

I just received a phishing email pretending to come from PayPay. It said someone in the UK tried to log into my account from an unrecognized device. For shame! Those Brits! Just can’t trust them. I must validate my account...

phishers deserve to be run out of town on a rail

8 responses •

7 people

Review: Science Fiction: "Trees are Where you Find Them" by Arthur Dekker Savage

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 17 May 17

The narrator of this light little piece set in a logging community in Oregon, tells of one old Doc Yoris, who normally didn’t join the others for a movie picture show at the Ivy and a drink. Doc is particular about his looks and...

science fiction

conservationism

3 responses •

3 people

Review: Science Fiction:“The Clean and Wholesome Land” by Ralph Sholto

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 16 May 17

During a lecture by Professor Cargill, Director of Education in the New State, Neal Pardeau, Director of Public Safety, prowls the dark auditorium, looking for them. This is where they plot and scheme—in the dark places in...

science fiction

2 responses •

2 people

Review: Science Fiction: “The Leech” by Robert Sheckley

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 15 May 17

This story opens with the leech, as it will be called, waiting for food. It’s been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it has spent untold time floating between the stars tucked away in its spore...

science fiction

mass into energy

2 responses •

3 people

Review: Science Fiction: “An Incident on Route 12” by James H. Schmitz

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 14 May 17

Phil Garfield has a plane to catch. Madge is waiting for him at a private airfield. The rendezvous isn’t romantic, but has more to do with with the suitcase on the front seat of Phil’s Packard and the $35,000 in it. Some thirty...

science fiction

2 responses •

2 people

Review: Science Fiction: "Pipe of Peace" by James McKimmey, Jr.

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 12 May 17

Henry the farmer wasn’t going to work today. Or tomorrow. Nor were farmers August Brown, Clyde Briggs, or Alfred Swanson. Without the food they produced, the government couldn’t feed the army. One farmer could do nothing, but...

science fiction

3 responses •

3 people

Review: Ghost Story: "The Ghost of Miser Brimpson" by Eden Phillpots

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 11 May 17

Jonathan Drake has spent his youth paying off the debts of his spendthrift father and grandfather so he could keep the land. His long-suffering mother has recently passed away. Now in his mid-thirties, Jonathan, though poor, has...

deceit for the greater good

4 responses •

4 people

Review: Horror Story: "The Lesser Brethern Mourn" by Seabury Quinn

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 10 May 17

The narrator says the things in this story happened “when the other Roosevelt” was in the White House. He doesn’t often talk about them because the only person who believes him is his mother-in-law and she came from County...

2 responses •

2 people

Review: Science Fiction:“A Place in the Sun” by Stephen Marlow

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 9 May 17

Once a petty criminal, Johnny Marlow was mortally wounded on a planet in the Saggitarian [sic. Really] Swarm. The white magic of the planet saved him from death, but as a bodiless sentient being, an elan, who can inhabit any body,...

science fiction

1 response •

1 person

Review: Fantasy: “My Father, The Cat” by Henry Slesar

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 8 May 17

Etienne Dauphin is bringing his fiancée Joanna to his ancestral home in Brittany. They met at the metropolitan museum of art where he found work after graduating from college in America. When he told her he was an orphan, he...

2 responses •

2 people

Science Fiction Review: "Attention Saint Patrick" by Murray Leinster

Siduri @msiduri (5687) • United States 7 May 17

President O’Hanrahan of the planetary government of Eire is hosting Sean O’Donohue, the chairman of the Dail—of Eire on Earth—Committee on the Condition of the Planet Eire. He’s there to check on the colony and could cut off all...

science fiction

planetary colony

5 responses •

5 people