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 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 (Jackals) is recognizably based on Victorian Britain and the main neighbouring country is presumably inspired by the Paris Commune and various other communist states (Quatérshift). 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 after an ice age, set hundreds of thousands of years in the future.

Hunt's novel, The Court of the Air, commenced his 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/Berlinale Co-Production Market for presentation to US and European film producers. HarperCollins' elevator pitch for The Court of the Air was summarized 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 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. The Kingdom's citizens initially believe the invaders are polar barbarians.

Foreign language and international editions of the three 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).

SF Crowsnest is a webzine published by Stephen Hunt and edited by Geoff Willmetts. Founded in 1991 by Stephen Hunt, it is based in England, but includes contributors from around the world. It publishes reviews of science fiction and fantasy novels, films, magazines, and television shows, and features interviews with authors and original short fiction. The zine originally launched in 1991 on the AppleLink online service, making it the first online science fiction service. The zine 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.

In the April 2007 print edition of SFX magazine, the web site's audience figures were reported at 800,000 unique visitors a month, making SFcrowsnest the second most visited science fiction web site after the web site of the SCIFI Channel, SCIFI.com, which currently gets 3.5 million unique visitors each month.

1. For the Crown and the Dragon (October 1994, ISBN 978-0952288503)

Jackelian series

1. The Court of the Air (April 2007, ISBN 0007232179)
• Published in the US in June 2008, ISBN 978-0765320421
2. The Kingdom Beyond the Waves (May 2008, ISBN 0007232209)
• Published in the US July 2009, ISBN 978-0765320438
3. The Rise of the Iron Moon (Feb 2009, ISBN 978-0007232222)
4. Secrets of the Fire Sea (Feb 2010, ISBN 978-0007289639)
5. Jack Cloudie (July 2011, ISBN 978-0007289646)