OUT 6 October 2020.
-The story "Carnival" by Milton Davis was longlisted for the BSFA Awards.
-The story "Still she visits" by Eugen bacon is longlisted for the Nommo Awards 2021.
-Shortlisted for the Australian Shadow Awards 2021.
Hadithi [n. fable, story] is a new hybrid birthed from the collaboration of two writers with heritage in the African diaspora.
It features seven short stories - three original - of ancestry, soul, continuity, discontinuity as well as steampunk, cyberfunk and a dieselfunk superhero story set in the ‘20s, together with a scholarly dialogue on the global state of black speculative fiction. Hadithi offers the kind of afrofuturistic diversity you might expect from a duality of curious writers unafraid to cross the borders of normalcy.
Hadithi & The State of Black Speculative Fiction
“Rich, strange and compelling...distinctive... inventive... Hadithi is just stunning. You won’t see the world in the same way again.” - Award-winning author and distinguished scholar Dominique Hecq, MA, Dip Ed, PhD
"Eugen Bacon and Milton Davis come together for Hadithi & The State of Speculative Black Fiction to share a compelling addition to the commentaries and canon of black literature" - Aurealis
"This book is a combination of an enlightening essay and seven rewarding stories. The first part, which is THE STATE OF BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION, highlights black speculative fiction as a new brand of writing that is well-crafted to subvert the expectations of open-minded and inquisitive readers. It goes on to substantiate the need for its acceptance and normalisation in today’s literature. This review tilts towards the second part, Hadithi.
The beauty of Hadithi lies in the skillfully developed characters and their unique voices. Ancestry and Carnival stood out because of their pacing and plot structure respectively. Any fan of speculative fiction would definitely enjoy this book." - Mehara Lit
"This collection of seven short stories is preceded by two scholarly, reflective essays from the authors on the global state of black speculative fiction. I found these not only informative and thought-provoking, but felt that the insights they provided enabled me to more fully appreciate the literary ‘underpinning’ of the stories.
Characters and landscapes, sights, smells and sounds are so richly evoked that they appear to leap off the page, something which reinforced my feeling of total engagement as I was reading, a sense that my everyday world had disappeared, replaced by an exotic, surreal alternative which I was allowed to inhabit for a time.
a hybrid birthed from the collaboration of two writers with heritage in the African diaspora’ but it is also a hybrid which fuses academic reflections with stunningly imaginative story-telling, all enclosed within a stunningly beautiful cover. It is truly a book to treasure and I hope that it will achieve the wide readership it deserves." Linda Hepworth
"Hadithi & The State of Black Speculative Fiction is the collaborative work of African-Australian author Eugen Bacon and black speculative fiction author Milton Davis... Bacon and Davis acknowledge that black speculative fiction is still a long way from being a normalised genre, but it is growing in popularity and appeal. In fact, Bacon asserts that a black protagonist can be personal but also universal in their appeal, and the authors urge us to stop asking “Is it sci-fi? Is it fantasy?”, because “speculative fiction bends genres!”
These two sleek writers present a comprehensive and alluring collection of fact and fiction intertwined with tantalising truths and ‘what ifs’. Hadithi & The State of Black Speculative Fiction offers its audience a cheeky and tantalising cross-genre experience of broad appeal to the reader and writer in all of us." Angela Wauchop, Other Terrain Journal. Read the full review here.
""Although Eugen and Milton’s writing styles are very different, for me what both authors have in common is the gift of enchanting storytelling, of enabling me to become totally immersed in their stories, to enter their imagined alternative worlds,to follow their narrative threads (no matter how mystifying they may at first appear), confident that whatever the outcome of each story, the experience of journeying through it would make me see the world through different eyes... The publisher describes ‘Hadithi’ as …’a hybrid birthed from the collaboration of two writers with heritage in the African diaspora’ but it is also a hybrid which fuses academic reflections with stunningly imaginative story-telling, all enclosed within stunningly beautiful cover. It is truly a book to treasure and I hope that it will achieve the wide readership it deserves." LibraryThing.com
