Jules Verne was a French writer and pioneer of the science fiction genre through novels like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, and The Mysterious Island. A visionary, Verne wrote about air, space, and underwater travel long before the ability to travel in these realms was invented, and his works remain amongst the most translated, most continually reprinted, and most widely read books of all time. Jules Verne died in 1905 having paved the way for future science fiction writers and enthusiasts.