Jules Verne (1828-1905),
Influential 19th-century French author whose novels laid the foundation for science fiction and greatly influenced the early work of H.G. Wells. Turning out two novels every year (under contract), this far-sighted futurist achieved huge popularity in his lifetime with a number of visionary stories inspired by the raw optimism and faith in science and invention of the nineteenth century.

Among his best-known works worldwide are: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Mysterious Island (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

These have been adapted to theatre, movies, TV series, and have been translated into all the languages of Europe as well as Japanese and Arabic.

Verne described his inventions in painstaking detail. Laying a fastidious scientific foundation he foreshadowed with extraordinary precision many scientific accomplishments of the following century.

He anticipated the submarine, the dirigible, automobiles, the high-speed steamship and mile-a-minute train, flights into outer space, helicopters, air conditioning, guided missiles, and motion pictures long before they were actually achieved. He has been described as “a writer born in the future that we inhabit as our present", and in our present, as in the past, we marvel at and take delight in the vividly imagined technological prognostication of Verne's extraordinary world.