Abstract
The science-fiction genre specificity determines not only the particular organization of the
literary text, but also the formation of the world depicted in it. All three major components of any
literary text: time, place, characters can be revealed in the typological peculiarities of formation and
the representation in the text. The dominant principle of constructing the counterfactual reality is the
principle of the shift. It deals with a spatial shift, the alienation of represented space from real locative
parameters, where the author of the literary work and its readers are located.