'Awful' 1987 Novel Ranked Stephen King's 'Weirdest' Book Ever
- - 'Awful' 1987 Novel Ranked Stephen King's 'Weirdest' Book Ever
Nina DerwinFebruary 8, 2026 at 3:09 AM
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Any deep dive into Stephen King's massive bibliography will turn up acclaimed classics like It, The Stand and Misery, but there's one curious outlier that keeps drawing raised eyebrows from fans and critics alike: The Tommyknockers.
Published in 1987, The Tommyknockers is a sprawling tale about a small town overtaken by an extraterrestrial force that has taken on its own reputation over the decades, not for brilliance, but for sheer oddness. In fact, it's so bizarre that it has even earned the title of the Weirdest Stephen King Book of all time, according to Collider, which is seriously saying something given the author's catalog.
In recent rankings of King's works, The Tommyknockers has consistently been lumped in with the weaker entries, not just for quality but for strangeness. In Collider's list of worst Stephen King books, it sits at no. 6, not because it's unreadable, but because its blend of sci-fi horror, convoluted pacing and bizarre plot twists make it feel like the author was throwing everything at the page without a clear target.
What truly fuels its "weirdest" designation among readers and critics isn’t just its premise— an ancient alien ship buried in Maine that psychically takes the townspeople hostage— but how King executes it. The book's tone veers from introspective to wildly absurd, its scientific logic clashes with cosmic horror, and its characters lurch between grounded small-town life and surreal lunacy. That tonal whiplash leaves many readers scratching their heads while others amused find themselves amused by its audacity.
King himself agrees. "The Tommyknockers is an awful book," he told Rolling Stone in 2014. "That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I've thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, 'There's really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.' The book is about 700 pages long, and I'm thinking, 'There's probably a good 350-page novel in there.'"
No matter where it ranks on a "best-to-worst" list, The Tommyknockers endures as a conversation piece in King’s body of work. It's a book that menaces readers not because it's universally considered great, but because its ambition outpaced its polish. And, that's exactly why it's widely considered King's weirdest novel ever.
This story was originally published by Parade on Feb 8, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
