Collider writer Jeremy Urquhart has compiled a ranked list of all 20 Stephen King novels that can be classed as science fiction, spanning the author's roughly 70-novel career and including titles written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. The piece sets out its selection criteria and then counts down from what it considers the weakest sci-fi entry to, presumably, the strongest, offering brief critical assessments of each.

The list excludes novellas even where some run longer than King's shortest novels, and folds in books that blend sci-fi with other genres, including the horror-leaning and dark-fantasy-heavy Dark Tower titles. The author notes that The Stand was left out for being too light on science-fiction elements, though he says it would have topped the list otherwise. The lowest-ranked entries shown are The Regulators (1996) at #20, dismissed as too messy; Cell (2006) at #19, a zombie-style tale deemed disappointing; and The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012) at #18, described as inessential and light on sci-fi.