Introduction. The article describes how the author’s individual concept SCIENCE is represented in a science fiction book “Roadside Picnic” written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The introduction correlates the concepts of “linguocultural concept”, “literary concept” and “author’s individual concept”, substantiates the key role of the component «science» in expressing the essence of the science fiction genre, describes various methods of representing the linguocultural concept and the author’s individual concept, implemented in the literary text. Aim and objectives. The article aims at the representation of the author’s individual concept SCIENCE in a literary text belonging to science fiction discourse. Material and methods. The material for this research is the story “Roadside Picnic” written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the genre of science fiction. The methodological basis of the research is represented by existing cultural linguistic approaches, according to which the linguocultural concept, transformed by the author in accordance with his/her own perception of reality, is represented by means of language in a literary text in the form of a literary (author’s individual) concept. The methodology for describing linguocultural concepts by Z. D. Popova and I. A. Sternin, which is used in this work, includes: etymological and definitional analysis of the concept name, identifying synonyms for the concept name, analysis of paremias and aphorisms, which include the name of the concept, associative experiment, frequency analysis, etc. To represent the linguocultural concept SCIENCE, general linguistic and specialized dictionaries of the Russian language were used. Results and discussion. As a result of the research we have built the structure of the content of the linguocultural concept of SCIENCE in the Russian language, including its conceptual and value parts; have represented the author’s individual concept of SCIENCE, verbalized in the literary text of the Strugatsky story and have carried out a comparative analysis of the content of the linguocultural concept of SCIENCE and the same-name author’s individual concept. Conclusion. It is concluded that the individual author’s concept SCIENCE, represented in the story “Roadside Picnic”, differs from the linguocultural concept SCIENCE in terms of the content of the nominative field: “work, occupation, profession» became the nuclear zone, and a new concept feature “objects of scientific research” appeared, bringing an additional meaning. The evaluative part of the author’s individual concept reflects the Strugatskys’ romantic, emotional view of science as the most important professional activity.