The March 2009 issue of Semaphore Magazine is very much a mixed bag in terms of story genre and tone. For genre, that’s not too surprising; their website indicates that while they’re mainly interested in fantasy and detective stories, all genres are welcome. The variance in tone, though, is a little more startling, which may be welcome to those who like frequent changes of pace, but I found myself wondering how many readers truly want that level of variety in one magazine.

“Courtship, Cutlets and a Barrow Full of Dung” by Joanna Galbraith, the first story in this issue, is a tale of how tradition can be changed by a single, dedicated man. The story has a light tone, which manages to stay even through the introduction of some unexpected violence, and Galbraith shows a deft and entertaining ability to generate amusing traditions for the small town of Rogan. Perhaps the biggest difficulty I had with this story was that the time setting feels distinctly off; although there are specific technological references (e.g. a truck) that suggest it may be set in modern times, the story feels as though it’s in an old-world fantasy setting. Galbraith’s story-telling is enjoyable, but the distraction of the seemingly anachronistic touches significantly detracts from the story.

Kate Smith’s “Bombshell,” about a set of bounty-hunters and their encounter with prey, is like playing Marco Polo in the pool with your friends: You don’t quite know where you’re going at any point, but when you get to the end, you’re where you expected to be. No major surprises here, but it’s a fun read. Smith’s writing is well-suited to the tone of the story, which reads like a space opera set in a fantasy zone, and both the dialogue and the relationships feel real. I tend to be dubious about stories that end with a pun, but in this case, I think that it fits with the story.

The third story, “Invisible Bullets” by Kevin Brown, contains a warning of “adult themes” in the table of contents, and if I could decide exactly what this story is about, I might have an opinion on whether that’s accurate. We have two guys who grew up in an orphanage at a party. Mayhem ensues. To some extent, this story is about the relationship between the two of them, but I’m not sure what else is going on. There initially seems to be an implication that something supernatural is happening, but then it doesn’t seem to be there in the end. This story really didn’t work for me, but Brown’s writing is powerful nonetheless.

“Dick Whittington’s Blues” by Grant Stone is an odd little story very loosely based on the folktale of—not surprisingly—Dick Whittington. A man who’s down on his luck finds unexpected help, but then there’s a twist, and he doesn’t make the choice that the reader might expect. While the plot works just fine, and Stone’s writing is engaging in many ways, the story as a whole doesn’t quite hold together. There’s a little too much that’s unwritten and left up to the reader to determine, and when character motivations are part of that, it’s difficult to feel much sympathy for or identification with the characters.

Lindsay Dubler’s “Scales” is a surreal tale about Chrisy, a hypochondriac whose latest “disease” is very much not what you would think. While I would have liked some sort of explanation for why things happen the way they do, Dubler’s prose is lively and diverting, and Chrisy is surprisingly appealing as a character; by the end, I almost wanted to cheer for her. One of the best things about “Scales” is that Dubler manages to take the story in an entirely different direction from what I expected, and yet, it’s somehow plausible—a mean feat given what happens in the story.

In “Last Orders,” Stuart Sharp tells the story of humanity’s last few moments on Earth. You might think that’s a morbid little tale, and you’d be right, but it’s also a fun romp of a story. Sharp makes the seemingly endless dialogue between a barkeeper and his last customer flow smoothly, and at the same time that you want to tap them on the shoulder and point out that there are only a few minutes left, you’re reveling in the familiar drama of day-to-day life. “Last Orders” is distinctly reminiscent of the start to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but that resemblance does it more good than harm.