Jules Verne, a 19th-century French author, is famed for such revolutionary science-fiction novels as Around the World in Eighty Days and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.He has sometimes been called the "Father of Science Fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback.In all, Verne authored more than 60 books (most notably the 54 novels comprising the Voyages Extraordinaires), as well as dozens of plays, short stories and librettos. He conjured hundreds of memorable characters and imagined countless innovations years before their time, including the submarine, space travel, terrestrial flight and deep-sea exploration.Verne is generally considered a major literary author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare.Some of the works appear only in their original French texts, due to copyright restrictions.
