SOURCE: Irwin, Robert. “Californian Dreams.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4689 (12 February 1993): 22.

In the following review of Greetings from Earth, Irwin observes that Bradfield is a fluent and intelligent writer, but criticizes the collection for its lack of variation in narrative voice, emotional pitch, and plot structure.

Although only “The Flash! Kid” can be reckoned to be science fiction in the strictest sense, several of the items in this collection of short stories [Greetings from Earth] were first published in such magazines as Interzone and Omni, and Scott Bradfield is commonly regarded by science-fiction readers as a “slipstream writer”—one whose settings and props are those of mainstream fiction, but whose fantastic ideas and plots are likely to appeal to people who normally enjoy reading stories about time travel, alien intelligences and galactic exploration.

In Greetings from Earth, Bradfield's explorations are restricted to the seedier parts of California, where, in...