Qualitative Development of Science Fiction in the USA

The article is devoted to the problem of formation of such literary genre (or kind) as science fiction in the USA. The historical and thematic overview focuses mostly on the 20th century as the period when great changes happened in the field of SF. Socio-historical method, as well as method of comparative literature, used in the research revealed that global changes took place in American science fiction in the second half of the 20th century. These changes firstly influenced the quality of the genre, thus, it is in the USA where science fiction was for the first time officially approved as an independent genre and recognized by literary scientists and writers