Stephen Hunt (author)

Stephen Hunt (born in Canada) is a British author.

Works

Hunt is 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,Fact|date=October 2007 a movement which is still popular amongst tabletop gaming enthusiasts. [see Flintloque] .

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 (the latter is an author with whose work Hunt's own has sometimes been compared to by reviewers)Fact|date=October 2007.

External links

* [http://www.SFcrowsnest.com Official site] Stephen Hunt's SFcrowsnest.com
* [http://www.myparkmag.co.uk/articles/entertainment/stephen-hunt-the-court-of-the-air.jsp Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air]
* [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Stephen_Hunt Stephen Hunt] at [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi ISFDB]