Stephen Hunt was born in Canada, but now lives in London, as well as spending a lot of time during the year with his family in Spain.
Stephen has worked as a writer, editor and publisher for a number of magazines and national newspaper groups in the UK and is currently employed by the research arm of an investment bank.  He is also the founder of www.SFcrowsnest.com, one of the oldest and most popular fan-run science fiction and fantasy websites, with over a quarter of a million readers each month.
He is probably best known for his fantasy novel For the Crown and the Dragon which won the 1994 WH Smith New Talent Prize and was also voted best fantasy novel of 1994 by the readers of the British genre gaming magazine Roleplayer Independent.  The novel is widely recognized as having created the 'flintlock fantasy' sub-genre of the mainstream sword and sorcery literary genre, a movement which is still popular amongst tabletop gaming enthusiasts.
Hunt's short fiction has appeared in various mainly US and UK-based genre magazines, and some of his earliest works were written in the cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction. The best known of these was The Hollow Duellists, a short story which William Gibson was reported as admiring as one of the leading works of the second-wave of cyberpunk fiction. This later went on to win the 1995 ProtoStellar magazine prize for best short fiction story, a tie with British SF author Stephen Baxter.

Also by Stephen Hunt is The Court of the Air (published 2007), a ‘steampunk’ novel set in a Victorian-esque world, with the addition of magic in various forms and where steam power, rather than oil, drives the economy.  The nation in which the plot is largely set (Jackals) is recognizably based on Victorian Britain and the main neighbouring country is presumably inspired by the Paris Commune and various other communist states (Quartershift).  A follow-up of sorts, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (published 2008), is set in the same world and introduces more races and tells some of the back-story. Rather than being an "alternative" universe, it is hinted at through the books that this is actually Earth thousands of years in the future.

Influences on Hunt's work include Jack Williamson, Stephen Goldin, Bruce Sterling, Larry Niven and Michael Moorcock (some reviewers have compared Hunt’s own work to that of the latter).

Author's Books