The terms dystopian, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic are often misused when describing a novel. For ways to tell them apart and narrow down your favorites, check out my post in the Horror Literature channel.

Dystopian - Apocalyptic - Post-Apocalyptic Novels Article

Great article! I was impressed with The Hunger Games (first two books at least) for their weirdly upbeat dystopian feel. Very impressive.

Let me know what you think of book 3 after you finish it. It seemed to drag out the story a bit but there's a few surprises.

I read them all. I just hated the third one.

Philip K Dick, BTW, was a master at Dystopias. Love Blade Runner.

Alice, what IS horror literature then? I always took it to refer to a story which involves a terrifying supernatural element. Though the divisions in literature genres can be rather arbitrary. Still I can't see The Handmaid's Tale as a horror story, even though it's . . . erm . . . horrible, I guess.

I don't think horror necessarily entails a supernatural element, even though it often does.

I would classify both "Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal" as horror novels, featuring as they do mayhem, torture and cannibalism.

I recently read "Halfhead" by Stuart(?) Macbride, set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian Glasgow. It was okay, the author has a knack for word usage which is sometimes interesting and ear-catching, other times simply annoying.

Misery is a horror novel that has no supernatural elements. MAN is that book scary! Much scarier than the movie!

"what IS horror literature then?"

That's a very good question. If you ask 100 people you should get 100 different answers. It crosses genres which doesn't help.
It's even more confusing today with cuddly werewolves and helpful ghost. Where do you put a vampire love story?

The dystopian novel would fall under the category speculative fiction which really doesn't have it's own library shelf that I've seen. So would alot of sci-fi and horror.

The main definition I've found for horror literature is anything that makes you feel the emotion of fear. There's alot of good reading that isn't strictly horror but crosses genres. Gothic writing for example. Wuthering Heights ended as a ghost story even though it's supposed to be the greatest love story of all time.