Stephen Hunt
Encyclopedia
Stephen Hunt is a British writer now living in Spain. He is best known for a series of fantasy novels with Steampunk
elements known as the Jackalian series, whose central setting is a nation somewhat resembling Victorian England named the Kingdom of Jackals.
Influences on Hunt's work include Jack Williamson
, Stephen Goldin
, David Gemmell
, Bruce Sterling
, Larry Niven
and Michael Moorcock
.
sub-genre of science fiction. The best-known of these was the "Hollow Duellists", a short story which William Gibson
was reported to admire as one of the leading works of the second-wave of cyberpunk fiction, and which later went on to win the 1995 ProtoStellar magazine prize for best short fiction story, a tie with British SF author Stephen Baxter
.
Stephen Hunt became the first client of the then-newly established John Jarrold Literary Agency in 2005. Hunt's second novel, The Court of the Air, was the subject of an auction held by John Jarrold in late 2005 between the UK's main publishing houses. HarperCollins
outbid their competitors to sign Hunt for a three-book deal, later extended to a six-book contract. The Bookseller
magazine reported HarperCollins won the auction with a high six-figure sum.
Foreign-language and international editions of the novels of the Jackelian series have been sold to Tor Books
(USA), Albin Michel (France), Verlagsgruppe Random House
(Germany), Enterbrain
Manga and Anime (Japan), Edições Saída de Emergência (Portugal), Paidós (Spain), AST
(Russia), and the Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House (China).
weapons (airships, clockwork machine guns, and steam-driven trucks called kettle-blacks). The book reviewer Andrew Darlington used Hunt's novel to coin the phrase "Flintlock Fantasy" to describe the sub-genre of fantasy set in a Regency or Napoleonic-era period.
The Court of the Air
(published 2007), is a fantasy 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 (the Kingdom of Jackals) is recognisably based on Victorian Britain and the main neighbouring country (Quatérshift) is presumably inspired by the Paris Commune
and various other communist states . 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.
The Court of the Air
commenced Hunt's Jackelian fantasy series, and was the first of his works to be published by HarperCollins, also the publisher of J. R. R. Tolkien
and C. S. Lewis
in the UK. The Court of the Air was one of the ten books selected by the organisers of the Berlinale Film Festival/Co-Production Market for presentation to US and European film producers. HarperCollins' elevator pitch for The Court of the Air was summarised as Charles Dickens
meets Bladerunner
.
In November 2008, his second book in the Jackelian series, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, was nominated for the long-list of the David Gemmell
Legend Award for Fantasy. The second novel continues the misadventures of u-boat privateer Commodore Jared Black, as the commodore goes in search of the ruins of a lost ancient utopia.
The third book in the series, The Rise of the Iron Moon, published in the UK in February 2009, features the invasion of the Kingdom of Jackals from the north by a horde called the Army of Shadows. It features the reappearance of the main protagonists from The Court of the Air, including Molly Templar, Oliver Brooks, the steamman scientist Coppertracks and Commodore Jared Black. The main new character is Purity Drake, a royalist prisoner of the state, who is revealed to be the commodore’s daughter.
The fourth book, Secrets of the Fire Sea, is a murder mystery set on the island of Jago (in the Fire Sea of the title), and features the consulting detective Jethro Daunt and his steamman assistant Boxiron attempting to uncover the murderer of the island's arch-bishop. Commodore Black ferries the investigators from the kingdom to Jago, and acts as a reluctant foil for the pair's sleuthing. The novel was published in the UK as a hardback in 2010 and as a paperback in 2011.
The fifth novel in the series, Jack Cloudie, centres around an airship war between the Kingdom of Jackals and the Empire of Cassarabia in the south. The main characters are Jack Keats, a young thief pressed into service with the Jackelian airship fleet, and Jared Black. The commodore is being blackmailed into helping the high fleet by the Kingdom's secret police, the State Protection Board.
The title of the sixth book is From the Deep of the Dark and is due for publication in February 2012. While appearing as guest of honour at the 2010 Forum Fantastico, Portugal's national science fiction convention, Hunt described his sixth book as primarily a spy mystery. It features Dick Tull, an officer of the State Protection Board close to retirement, the consulting detectives Jethro Daunt and Boxiron, and Commodore Jared Black. The characters are investigating the theft of the Jackelian royal sceptre and a series of strange murders and bloodless corpses in the capital, Middlesteel. Thief Charlotte Shades is asked by two mysterious men to steal King Jude’s Sceptre from the Parliament vaults. Daunt and Boxiron know there is more to the two men than meets the eye and, with the rescued thief, escape in an ancient submarine captained by Commodore Jethro Black. They encounter resistance from strange underwater races, but human, steam-man, seanore and gillneck must band together to save the kingdom from danger.
While speaking at the Forum Fantastico, Hunt noted the versatility of fantasy as a genre, and described his Jackelian series as quest novel (The Court of the Air), adventure novel (The Kingdom Beyond the Waves), invasion tale (The Rise of the Iron Moon), murder mystery (Secrets of the Fire Sea), war story (Jack Cloudie) and spy novel (From the Deep of the Dark ).
His first role with the online world was in 1991 when he worked on the UK rollout of the AppleLink
service, Apple's pre-Web equivalent of AOL/Compuserve. In 1997 he launched the web site for the science journal Nature for Macmillan Publishers
, as well as their sister titles (Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine). Nature.com went on to the win the first Periodical Publishers Association
(PPA) Award for web-based content.
Hunt then became online publisher for the Risk Waters group, in charge of creating an online presence for their stable of magazines. Working at Risk, one of his projects was FinanceWise, a finance-specific search engine created as a joint venture between Risk and IBM
. It won the Financial Times
Award for Best Web Site in the year of its launch.
Shortly after winning the FT Award, he was hired by the Financial Times
to be head of online development for their own magazine arm, where he introduced sites for their media, including Investors Chronicle
, The Banker
, as well as various channels of the newspaper's main FT.com site.
In 2001, Hunt became research director of the investment bank Almeida Capital, where he founded AltAssets
, an online service focused on the venture capital
and private equity
market.
novels, films, magazines, and television shows, and features interviews with authors and original short fiction. The magazine originally launched in 1991 on the AppleLink
online service, making it the first online science fiction service. The magazine left AppleLink
in 1994 to be hosted on the World Wide Web as www.SF-fantasy.com and then moving to www.sfcrowsnest.com in 1999.
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
elements known as the Jackalian series, whose central setting is a nation somewhat resembling Victorian England named the Kingdom of Jackals.
Influences on Hunt's work include Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson
John Stewart Williamson , who wrote as Jack Williamson was a U.S. writer often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction" following the death in 1988 of Robert A...
, Stephen Goldin
Stephen Goldin
Stephen Charles Goldin is an American science fiction and fantasy author.-Biography:Goldin was born in in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, David Gemmell
David Gemmell
David Andrew Gemmell was a bestselling British author of heroic fantasy. A former journalist and newspaper editor, Gemmell had his first work of fiction published in 1984. He went on to write over thirty novels. Best known for his debut, Legend, Gemmell's works display violence, yet also explore...
, Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
, Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
and Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
.
Publishing history
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 cyberpunkCyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
sub-genre of science fiction. The best-known of these was the "Hollow Duellists", a short story which William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
was reported to admire as one of the leading works of the second-wave of cyberpunk fiction, and which later went on to win the 1995 ProtoStellar magazine prize for best short fiction story, a tie with British SF author Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter is a prolific British hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering.- Writing style :...
.
Stephen Hunt became the first client of the then-newly established John Jarrold Literary Agency in 2005. Hunt's second novel, The Court of the Air, was the subject of an auction held by John Jarrold in late 2005 between the UK's main publishing houses. HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
outbid their competitors to sign Hunt for a three-book deal, later extended to a six-book contract. The Bookseller
The Bookseller
The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Neill Denny is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine, while Philip Jones is deputy editor, having recently been promoted from the position of managing editor of the Bookseller.com...
magazine reported HarperCollins won the auction with a high six-figure sum.
Foreign-language and international editions of the novels of the Jackelian series have been sold to Tor Books
Tor Books
Tor Books is one of two imprints of Tom Doherty Associates LLC, based in New York City. It is noted for its science fiction and fantasy titles. Tom Doherty Associates also publishes mainstream fiction, mystery, and occasional military history titles under its Forge imprint. The company was founded...
(USA), Albin Michel (France), Verlagsgruppe Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
(Germany), Enterbrain
Enterbrain
is a Japanese magazine publisher established on April 1, 2000. Enterbrain magazines are generally focused on video games and computer entertainment as well as video game and strategy guides. In addition, the company publishes a small selection of anime artbooks. Enterbrain is based in Tokyo, Japan...
Manga and Anime (Japan), Edições Saída de Emergência (Portugal), Paidós (Spain), AST
AST (publisher)
AST is one of the largest book publishing companies in Russia. AST and its rival Eksmo together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books. The company is headed by Oleg Bartenev...
(Russia), and the Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House (China).
Works
His first fantasy novel, For the Crown and the Dragon, was published in 1994, and introduced a young officer, Taliesin, fighting for the Queen of England in a Napoleonic-period alternative reality, where the wars of Europe were being fought with sorcery and steampunkSteampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
weapons (airships, clockwork machine guns, and steam-driven trucks called kettle-blacks). The book reviewer Andrew Darlington used Hunt's novel to coin the phrase "Flintlock Fantasy" to describe the sub-genre of fantasy set in a Regency or Napoleonic-era period.
The Court of the Air
The Court of the Air
The Court of the Air is the first book by Stephen Hunt in his Jackelian Series. The plot is set in a steampunk world that mixes historical events or social concepts of the real world with elements of fantasy novels, such as sorcery and superpowers....
(published 2007), is a fantasy steampunk
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
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 (the Kingdom of Jackals) is recognisably based on Victorian Britain and the main neighbouring country (Quatérshift) is presumably inspired by the Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
and various other communist states . 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.
The Court of the Air
The Court of the Air
The Court of the Air is the first book by Stephen Hunt in his Jackelian Series. The plot is set in a steampunk world that mixes historical events or social concepts of the real world with elements of fantasy novels, such as sorcery and superpowers....
commenced Hunt's Jackelian fantasy series, and was the first of his works to be published by HarperCollins, also the publisher of J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
and C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
in the UK. The Court of the Air was one of the ten books selected by the organisers of the Berlinale Film Festival/Co-Production Market for presentation to US and European film producers. HarperCollins' elevator pitch for The Court of the Air was summarised as Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
meets Bladerunner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
.
In November 2008, his second book in the Jackelian series, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, was nominated for the long-list of the David Gemmell
David Gemmell
David Andrew Gemmell was a bestselling British author of heroic fantasy. A former journalist and newspaper editor, Gemmell had his first work of fiction published in 1984. He went on to write over thirty novels. Best known for his debut, Legend, Gemmell's works display violence, yet also explore...
Legend Award for Fantasy. The second novel continues the misadventures of u-boat privateer Commodore Jared Black, as the commodore goes in search of the ruins of a lost ancient utopia.
The third book in the series, The Rise of the Iron Moon, published in the UK in February 2009, features the invasion of the Kingdom of Jackals from the north by a horde called the Army of Shadows. It features the reappearance of the main protagonists from The Court of the Air, including Molly Templar, Oliver Brooks, the steamman scientist Coppertracks and Commodore Jared Black. The main new character is Purity Drake, a royalist prisoner of the state, who is revealed to be the commodore’s daughter.
The fourth book, Secrets of the Fire Sea, is a murder mystery set on the island of Jago (in the Fire Sea of the title), and features the consulting detective Jethro Daunt and his steamman assistant Boxiron attempting to uncover the murderer of the island's arch-bishop. Commodore Black ferries the investigators from the kingdom to Jago, and acts as a reluctant foil for the pair's sleuthing. The novel was published in the UK as a hardback in 2010 and as a paperback in 2011.
The fifth novel in the series, Jack Cloudie, centres around an airship war between the Kingdom of Jackals and the Empire of Cassarabia in the south. The main characters are Jack Keats, a young thief pressed into service with the Jackelian airship fleet, and Jared Black. The commodore is being blackmailed into helping the high fleet by the Kingdom's secret police, the State Protection Board.
The title of the sixth book is From the Deep of the Dark and is due for publication in February 2012. While appearing as guest of honour at the 2010 Forum Fantastico, Portugal's national science fiction convention, Hunt described his sixth book as primarily a spy mystery. It features Dick Tull, an officer of the State Protection Board close to retirement, the consulting detectives Jethro Daunt and Boxiron, and Commodore Jared Black. The characters are investigating the theft of the Jackelian royal sceptre and a series of strange murders and bloodless corpses in the capital, Middlesteel. Thief Charlotte Shades is asked by two mysterious men to steal King Jude’s Sceptre from the Parliament vaults. Daunt and Boxiron know there is more to the two men than meets the eye and, with the rescued thief, escape in an ancient submarine captained by Commodore Jethro Black. They encounter resistance from strange underwater races, but human, steam-man, seanore and gillneck must band together to save the kingdom from danger.
While speaking at the Forum Fantastico, Hunt noted the versatility of fantasy as a genre, and described his Jackelian series as quest novel (The Court of the Air), adventure novel (The Kingdom Beyond the Waves), invasion tale (The Rise of the Iron Moon), murder mystery (Secrets of the Fire Sea), war story (Jack Cloudie) and spy novel (From the Deep of the Dark ).
Online pioneer
Outside of his novels, Hunt is known for his work as one of the pioneers of Web-based content.His first role with the online world was in 1991 when he worked on the UK rollout of the AppleLink
AppleLink
AppleLink was the name of both Apple Computer's online service for its dealers, third party developers, and users, and the client software used to access it. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, AppleLink was a popular service for Mac and Apple IIGS users...
service, Apple's pre-Web equivalent of AOL/Compuserve. In 1997 he launched the web site for the science journal Nature for Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, as well as their sister titles (Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine). Nature.com went on to the win the first Periodical Publishers Association
Periodical Publishers Association
The Professional Publishers Association - formerly known as the Periodical Publishers Association - is a publishing industry body which promotes and protects the interests of companies involved in the production of consumer, customer and business media in the United Kingdom.The PPA's work is...
(PPA) Award for web-based content.
Hunt then became online publisher for the Risk Waters group, in charge of creating an online presence for their stable of magazines. Working at Risk, one of his projects was FinanceWise, a finance-specific search engine created as a joint venture between Risk and IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. It won the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
Award for Best Web Site in the year of its launch.
Shortly after winning the FT Award, he was hired by the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
to be head of online development for their own magazine arm, where he introduced sites for their media, including Investors Chronicle
Investors Chronicle
The Investors Chronicle is a weekly magazine in the United Kingdom for private investors and is published by the Financial Times Group. The magazine publishes articles about global markets and sectors, and news on corporate actions such as takeovers and share issues...
, The Banker
The Banker
The Banker is an English-language monthly international financial affairs publication owned by The Financial Times Ltd. and edited in London...
, as well as various channels of the newspaper's main FT.com site.
In 2001, Hunt became research director of the investment bank Almeida Capital, where he founded AltAssets
AltAssets
AltAssets is an online financial news website focused on the private equity and venture capital industry. Owned and operated as a free service by private equity advisory firm, Almeida Capital, AltAssets was launched in 2001 and is based in London....
, an online service focused on the venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
and private equity
Private equity
Private equity, in finance, is an asset class consisting of equity securities in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange....
market.
SF Crowsnest
SF Crowsnest is an online magazine published by Stephen Hunt and edited by Geoff Willmetts. Founded in 1991 by Hunt, it is based in England but includes contributors from around the world. It publishes reviews of science fiction and fantasyFantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
novels, films, magazines, and television shows, and features interviews with authors and original short fiction. The magazine originally launched in 1991 on the AppleLink
AppleLink
AppleLink was the name of both Apple Computer's online service for its dealers, third party developers, and users, and the client software used to access it. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, AppleLink was a popular service for Mac and Apple IIGS users...
online service, making it the first online science fiction service. The magazine left AppleLink
AppleLink
AppleLink was the name of both Apple Computer's online service for its dealers, third party developers, and users, and the client software used to access it. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, AppleLink was a popular service for Mac and Apple IIGS users...
in 1994 to be hosted on the World Wide Web as www.SF-fantasy.com and then moving to www.sfcrowsnest.com in 1999.
Jackelian series
- The Court of the AirThe Court of the AirThe Court of the Air is the first book by Stephen Hunt in his Jackelian Series. The plot is set in a steampunk world that mixes historical events or social concepts of the real world with elements of fantasy novels, such as sorcery and superpowers....
(April 2007, ISBN 0007232179)- Published in the US in June 2008, ISBN 978-0765320421
- The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (May 2008, ISBN 0007232209)
- Published in the US July 2009, ISBN 978-0765320438
- The Rise of the Iron Moon (Feb 2009, ISBN 978-0007232222)
- Published in the US March 2011, 978-0765327666
- Secrets of the Fire Sea (Feb 2010, ISBN 978-0007289639)
- Jack Cloudie (July 2011, ISBN 978-0007289646)
- From The Deep of the Dark (Feb 2012, ISBN 978-0007289714 )
External links
- Stephen Hunt's SF Crowsnest science fiction and fantasy webzine
- Stephen Hunt's official blog
- Stephen Hunt's official author's site
- Interview with Stephen Hunt at [Grasping for the Wind], 3 June 2008
- Interview with Stephen Hunt at [The Bibliophile Stalker], 18 November 2008
- From the Deep of the Dark on Amazon.co.uk