PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Master of Horror author Stephen King is the end all and be all for many genre lovers when they feel it’s time to sit back, relax and grab something terrifying to read. However, not all of King’s books are created equal. Believe it or not, some are better than others. So we at PopHorror decided to rank the entire freaking list of over 60 books. To break it down and make it much easier to trudge through, we split the list up into decades. If you’re interested in another decade entirely, they’re all linked at both the top and bottom of every article. And just so you know, books written under King’s pen name, Richard Bachman, and any non-fiction books that King has written, are not included in this list.
Despite the fact that this particular list only has six years’ worth of stories, this time period actually has some of the best tales that King has ever written.
Looking for another decade? Look here: 1981-1990… 1991-2000… 2001-2010… 2011-2018
#7 The Dead Zone (1979)
Synopsis:
Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after his car accident and discovers that he can see people’s futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems.
When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future.
There’s a pretty cool concept here in Dead Zone. A most ordinary guy – named John Smith, natch – finds himself blessed (or cursed) with the extraordinary ability to tell the future of anyone he touches, whether he wants to or not. Besides going on the road as scarf wearing, wart-nosed gypsy fortune teller, there’s not much else a person could do when faced with this dilemma but hole themselves up in their house and never touch another person again. What a depressing existence. The story itself is heavy, foreboding and gloomy as hell, but the end was so incredibly similar to Taxi Driver (1976) that it always felt a bit tacked on to me.
#6 Firestarter (1980)
Synopsis:
Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson were once college students looking to make some extra cash, volunteering as test subjects for an experiment orchestrated by the clandestine government organization known as The Shop. But the outcome unlocked exceptional latent psychic talents for the two of them—manifesting in even more terrifying ways when they fell in love and had a child. Their daughter, Charlie, has been gifted with the most extraordinary and uncontrollable power ever seen—pyrokinesis, the ability to create fire with her mind. Now the merciless agents of The Shop are in hot pursuit to apprehend this unexpected genetic anomaly for their own diabolical ends by any means necessary…including violent actions that may well ignite the entire world around them as Charlie retaliates with a fury of her own….
I felt so bad for poor Charlie McGee. Her entire life was tragic, with her mom dying a horrible death and her dad practically killing himself to protect her. Despite the fact that the book ended on a relatively positive note, there’s no way The Shop would ever stop looking for her. I loved that the protagonist was a little girl, and I felt King did a fantastic job portraying her sweet, immature and terrified mind. There were too many great books from this decade, so I had to put Firestarter near the bottom of the register. In any other list, this book would be much closer to the top.
#5 ‘Salem’s Lot (1975)
Synopsis:
Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in the hopes that living in an old mansion, long the subject of town lore, will help him cast out his own devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods and only one comes out alive, Mears begins to realize that there may be something sinister at work and that his hometown is under siege by forces of darkness far beyond his control.
Gone was Bram Stoker’s cape-wearing, seductive Dracula. King replaced this oft-told vampire myth with the very nature of the blood-sucking beast, a creature much closer to Nosferatu than Stoker’s dignified count. This creature was not showy, not flashy; its only desire to hunt and feed. Vampires were scary again, and not because they might seduce you on your sleep. This one might actually rip your throat out.
#4 Night Shift (1977)
Synopsis:
Night Shift—Stephen King’s first collection of stories—is an early showcase of the depths that King’s wicked imagination could plumb. In these 20 tales, we see mutated rats gone bad (“Graveyard Shift”); a cataclysmic virus that threatens humanity (“Night Surf,” the basis for The Stand); a smoker who will try anything to stop (“Quitters, Inc.”); a reclusive alcoholic who begins a gruesome transformation (“Gray Matter”); and many more. This is Stephen King at his horrifying best.
Some of my very favorite of King’s short stories are enclosed within the pages of Night Shift. There are a few prequels to other novels – “Jerusalem’s Lot” took place over 100 years before the events in ‘Salem’s Lot and “Night Surf” gave us another tale of the Captain Tripps flu from The Stand, but without the comfort of immunity. There’s the terrifying change going on in the body of a retired astronaut in “I Am the Doorway,” a boy watching his beer-chugging father turn devolve into something horrendous in “Grey Matter,” and my absolute favorite short story ever, “The Boogeyman,” about a guy confessing to his psychiatrist that his children did not die of crib death, but of something much more sinister. Plus the book has “Quitters, Inc” and “The Ledge” from the movie Cat’s Eye, “Children of the Corn,” “Lawnmower Man,” “The Mangler,” “Trucks” (which was made into 1986’s Maximum Overdrive), “Graveyard Shift” and “Sometimes They Come Back.” You’d be hard pressed to find a story in here that isn’t recognized on the silver screen in some way, and there’s a reason for that.
#3 Carrie (1974)
Synopsis:
Carrie White may be picked on by her classmates, but she has a gift. She can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. This is her power and her problem. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offers Carrie a chance to be a normal…until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that no one will ever forget.
King’s novel about a bullied teenage girl getting revenge on her tormentors – both her classmates and her own mother – rang true for many timid, bulldozed teens, offering up a retribution fantasy only the most tortured mind could ever conjure up. And it all rang so true, so pure and sweet, that you almost wondered if King had been visiting your dreams at night. To me, C-A-R-R-I-E W-H-I-T-E spells VENGEANCE.
#2 The Shining (1977)
Synopsis:
Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.
Another book from the mind of a young child, The Shining drops a helpless boy in a fight he can’t possibly win. He wants to trust his daddy. Daddies are supposed to save you from the monsters, so if they say something is okay, you’ve got to believe them… right? The idea of having to save yourself from your own parents is the scariest thing a child could ever have to go through, both physically and emotionally. The worst part about The Shining was that, unlike the movie version, the book version of Jack Torrance was just a regular guy. Sure, he might have had a few too many drinks now and again, but who hasn’t? There was no way to know what The Overlook would do to him, and no reason for Danny and Wendy to be nervous about staying in that snowbound hotel with him. None of the Torrance family were bad people. Like John Smith, they were ordinary folks like you and me, caught in a extraordinary, supernatural situation. It just wasn’t fair, and that was what made it so scary.
#1 The Stand (1978)
Synopsis:
A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
In my opinion, The Stand is the best book Stephen King has ever written, period. It’s the Jaws of the novel universe… there’s a bit of everything in there – terror, intrigue, loyalty, good and evil, romance, action, blood and gore – and it all blends so beautifully. There’s the horror of the disease itself, the grief, loneliness and rot of its after effects, the recreation of society, the likeable, memorable characters that stand the test of time, an epic battle between good and evil, plus the very first appearance of The Walking Man himself, Randall Flagg. Plus, the ultimate climax of the book was so mind-blowing that I couldn’t sleep for a week, thinking about the ramifications of it all. Many say that The Gunslinger series is King’s magnum opus, but for me, it’s The Stand all the way.
