It, Misery, The Shining, Pet Semetary—on the backs of novels like these, Stephen King hoisted himself on the pop culture landscape in a way few—if any—other horror authors have managed. The so-called “Master of Horror” is a household well known for bringing the scares and his penchant for doorstop sized tomes.
While horror has largely comprised the meat of King’s expansive bibliography, it’s easy to forget or overlook how often he’s veered from that particular darkly lit path. The latter years of his career have seen King venturing outside his supposed comfort zone with some mysteries, a bit of crime fiction, and even a slice-of-life novella. But this is hardly an aberration. If you take a close look at King’s works—particularly his short story collections, a place where he’s often his most experimental—he’s actually spent a good portion of his career stepping outside the boundaries of modern horror. Interestingly, his most typical landing spot has been sci-fi and fantasy.
These science-fiction and fantasy titles are undeniably Stephen King, and they also show a side of the author that is all too often disregarded or mischaracterized simply because King’s name is on the dust jacket. If horror is not your particular cup of tea yet you still find yourself wondering what all the fuss is about, this is actually a good area to dig in—all the King and very few, if any, of the scares.
The Dark Tower Cycle
Given that he is best known for his horror, it’s all the more interesting that the true centerpiece of Stephen King’s narrative universe—the spine from which nearly all of his stories hang—is a seven volume western-tinged fantasy owing as much to Arthurian legend and Tolkien as it does to Lovecraft and Matheson. Widely considered his magnum opus, The Dark Tower is the key work in Stephen King’s sci-fi/fantasy canon. Beginning with The Gunslinger and ending with The Dark Tower, the series centers on Roland Deschain, a member of a fallen knight-like order known as gunslingers, in a dystopian world parallel to our own with similarities to the American old west. Driven by an all-encompassing obsession with the mythical Dark Tower—the nexus of the multiverse—Roland sets out on the trail of a deadly wizard known as the Man in Black. The Man in Black not only destroyed Roland’s life, but could lead him to the tower. It is a sweeping saga that combines elements of King’s trademark horror with epic fantasy, features some of his best characters, and in a deeper sense is metaphorical examination of King’s views on storytelling.
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The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger
The Stand
While a solid argument can be made that Stephen King really hit his stride with ‘Salem’s Lot and The Shining, when most people think Stephen King, they think of The Stand. While it’s easy to think of this 1,000 page doorstop as simply a horror, let’s be honest, the actual scares are few and far between. The meat of The Stand is two-fold: 1) you have post-apocalyptic trappings set against the backdrop of plague-ravaged world, and 2) the fantastical struggle between good and evil at its center. While it may be King’s best known novel, The Stand sits fairly firmly on the sci-fi and fantasy end of the post-apocalyptic spectrum. The Stand follows an eclectic group of survivors spread across two factions—one good, one evil—in the aftermath of a catastrophic pandemic that wipes out most of the world’s population. As the two factions struggle to rebuild their differing views of society, they are drawn inexorably drawn toward a climactic confrontation.
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The Stand
The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman)
The Long Walk was the second of Stephen King’s so-called Bachman Books—the infamous first, Rage, was taken out of print at King’s request due to its potential influence on school shooters. Set against the backdrop of a near-future, dystopian America, The Long Walk follows a teenager named Ray Garraty who joins a grueling event simply called the Walk for a chance at a potentially life-winning prize.
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The Long Walk
Firestarter
I recently reread Firestarter for the first time since high school and couldn’t help but wonder how this one was ever considered horror. The novel centers around a young girl named Charlie who inherits pyrokinetic abilities from her parents, who themselves gained telekinetic and telepathic abilities after being experimented on by a shady government outfit known as the Shop. When the Shop learns of Charlie’s abilities, they unsuccessfully attempt to kidnap her and kill her mother in the process. Firestarter opens with Charlie and her father on the run from the organization and staying just barely a step ahead. Unfortunately, the walls are beginning to close in. There’s nothing paranormal or supernatural at play—just the classic sci-fi staple of science gone awry.
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Firestarter
The Talisman (with Peter Straub)
The Talisman, written with fellow horror icon Peter Straub, is pure dark fantasy and like The Gunslinger before it, is one of King’s early forays into the concept of parallel fantasy worlds. In this case, a young boy named Jack Sawyer must make his way simultaneously across the US and a twisted parallel world known as the Territories, where time and distance work differently, to locate a mysterious talisman and save his mother. While in some ways, the Territories mirror our own world, it is more akin to a dark mythic world populated by werewolves, grotesque mutants, and fairytale queens. Truthfully, it’s not the best from either writer, but for a more fantastical introduction to Stephen King, it certainly fits the bill.
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The Talisman
Black House (with Peter Straub)
While like The Stand, Black House skews more toward horror than anything on this list, it’s one you’ll want to take a look at it after picking up The Talisman. This slice of dark fantasy is somewhat more grounded, but continues the story of Jack Sawyer, now a celebrated detective with the LAPD and no memory of his childhood exploits in the territories. Here, a series of grisly murders in a sleepy Wisconsin town inevitably draws Jack back into the Territories, the twisted and potentially deadly realm from his childhood.
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Black House
The Eyes of the Dragon
Other than The Dark Tower cycle, The Eyes of the Dragon is unquestionably King’s most traditional foray into fantasy. The Eyes of the Dragon arrived near the end of Stephen King’s real boom period and just before the lean years that followed The Tommyknockers. As such, this epic fantasy of two princes staving off the devious machinations of a court magician was not particularly well-received by King fans at the time. It more or less entirely eschews the horror aspects that he was so well known for to chart a course into traditional fantasy tropes, from the reluctant hero to the devious court magician and the pseudo-medieval European setting. King doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel in any sense here, but he does ensure that the wheel rolls along quite well. Given that it was conceived as a bedtime story for his children, its clear that The Eyes of the Dragon was a labor of love and, when viewed through that prism, has its charms. It skews more Young Adult than anything else in the King canon as well, but it is a well-hewn, if predictable adventure that shows fantasy is indeed in King’s wheelhouse.
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The Eyes of the Dragon
11/22/63
Stephen King’s time travel/alternative history epic features some of the best writing he’s ever done. It’s a well conceived, bittersweet rumination on unintended consequences, nostalgia, and how moments of cultural significance ripple outward. As is often the case with King, he takes his time getting from point a to b, but the journey here is a particularly satisfying one as we venture along with English teacher Jake Epping, for better or worse, into one of the defining moments of the 20th century.
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11/22/63
The Institute
Stephen King’s latest is a dose of pure sci-fi. In many ways, it reads like a spiritual successor to Firestarter. The two do cover a fair amount of the same narrative territory—kids with psychic abilities, shadowy government organizations, the often-monstrous nature of humanity under the guise of the greater good. I also can’t help but wonder whether the titular Institute is, itself, an off-shoot of the Shop? Regardless, this tale of kidnapped children and telekinesis is an intriguing sci-fi thriller that raises some big questions—which it admittedly doesn’t really answer—and makes for an entertaining read.
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The Institute
Keith is a freelance writer residing in Philadelphia with his lovely, if oft exasperated wife, son and three cats. When not writing about books and movies, Keith tries to be optimistic about humanity—he usually fails. He generally has opinions, sometimes he shares them on Twitter @keith_rice1.
Thee The Long Walk is awesome! It doesn’t get mentioned too often which is a shame.
Also, The Tommyknockers really should be on that list of SFF works.
The Long Walk is definitely an overlooked gem, Jens! And that’s a good point on The Tommyknockers, it is definitely more SFF and could have had a spot here. But, to be honest (and this is totally subjective), it’s one of my least favorite King novels and I was trying to include what I consider to be the stronger SFF stuff. There’s really a lot of SFF in King’s bibliography, definitely more than I could reasonably include.
The Dark Tower Cycle has eight books, not seven – The Wind Through the Keyhole, although written later, fits between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla and provides much additional detail on Roland’s early years.
I’m aware that The Tommyknockers isn’t particularly well-regarded by many readers. I never quite understood this. I enjoyed the story. But that’s subjective, of course.
I just thought that The Tommyknockers is one of the few pure SF novels by King (even if this only become apparent towards the end) but I see what you’re saying – the list could be a lot longer. (Like, if you classify Firestarter as SF because of Charlie’s pyrokinetic abilities, then Carrie should be right there, too, with her telekinetic abilities.)
And to be honest, I find it difficult to draw a line between supernatural horror and dark fantasy, I guess the line is very much blurred.
Keyhole is actually about half “teen Roland goes on a mission” and half sequel to Eyes of the Dragon. I’d guess its a mash-up of two ideas for novellas that were floating around in King’s head until he decided to make one story out of them. (“Little Sisters of Eluria” is another standalone DT novella, but more horror and less SFF.) I liked Keyhole better than I liked certain parts of the main DT sequence.
I remember reading “Eyes of the Dragon” when I was a kid and loving the fact that one of the main characters was a dog, and also being floored by the realization that the bad guy was the same as the bad guy from “The Stand” back when he was a Necronomicon-reading medieval wizard in a different dimension.
It could also be considered sci-fi, I think.
Uncle Stevie has tons of SF stuff littered throughout his short fiction, the best (for starters) being “The Jaunt” (from Skeleton Crew) and “The End of the Whole Mess” (from Nightmares & Dreamscapes). I’ve been reading him for 40-odd years, and I still look forward most of all to his short fiction. Good news is that a new collection is on the way in May.
Almost every Stephen King novel I’ve read (at least 15 of them) is a fantasy. All of them are, to varying degrees, horrific. (I found The Stand plenty scary, myself.) Some are also science fictional, but science fiction is best defined as a (rationalized) branch of fantasy. This article might be making too much of artificial marketing categories to generate its premise.
Horror is not synonymous with the supernatural. SF horror is totally a thing and that is were you can perhaps place The Tommyknockers.
The Long Walk is definitely overlooked and underappreciated. It’s a low-key sort of teen/YA dystopia that doesn’t really explain very much. What could have happened to this society that lets something like this happen? It’s so subtly wrong…..
Solid list, but I’d have had The Tommyknockers, Insomnia, Under the Dome, and Sleeping Beauties on it as well. Maybe even Dreamcatcher.
An argument could also be made that Carrie, The Dead Zone, The Mist, and Revival are sufficiently science-fictional to belong.
Bottom line: read some Stephen King.
Wow, where is Dreamcatcher? That is almost pure sf with a little paranormal thrown.
@jens
I love The Tommyknockers! Partially because it was a gift from my sister but mostly because it’s just a really interesting story.
I think From A Buick 8 would deserve to be on the list as well as it’s partially about a small group of people who have come into the possession of an inexplicable artefact and at least one of them is extremely interested in studying it. I think this one is massively underrated and it’s one of my favourites.
He’s really a fantasy-with-horror-elements writer more often than he’s a straight horror writer, IMO. I’d say IT qualifies as much as fantasy as horror– magical amnesia, rituals, boggarts, etc. Also, the oft-overlooked From A Buick 8 is basically pure fantasy (just saw your comment @scimarad, you’re so right), as is Lisey’s Story, both 2 of his best in my opinion. And Cell is definitely sci-fi.
Under the Dome and Dreamcatcher are SFF for sure.
I’m embarrassed I didn’t know about The Wind in the Keyhole…off to remedy that now. Wizards & Glass, I thought, was one of King’s best books and could almost stand on its own outside of the Dark Tower series.
The Stand is my favorite novel. Read the original released version a couple of times, then read the new(er) “author’s cut” and have listened to the audio version. I never get tired of it.
*Through the Keyhole.