Enormously popular French author, the initiation father of science fiction with H.G. Wells. Verne's stories, written for adolescents as well as adults, caught the enterprising spirit of the Nineteenth century, its uncritical fascination just about scientific progress and inventions. His works were often written in the form of a travel book, which took the readers on a voyage to the moon in From the Earth to the Moon (1865) or to another direction as in A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). Galore of Verne's ideas have been hailed as prophetic. Among his best-known books is the classic adventure story About the Earth in Eighty Days (1873).

"Ah - what a journey - what a marvelous and extraordinary journey! Here we had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had move out