Jules Verne in the context of "Hugo Gernsback"

A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la Lune [lə vwajaʒ dɑ̃ la lyn], transl. "The Journey to the Moon") is a 1902 French science-fiction adventure trick film written, directed and produced by Georges Méliès. Inspired by the Jules Verne novel From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1870), the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. Méliès leads an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis.

Although the film disappeared into obscurity (after Méliès's retirement from the film industry) it was rediscovered around 1930, when Méliès's importance to the history of cinema was beginning to be recognised by film devotees. An original hand-colored print was discovered in 1993, and restored in 2011.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than forty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells is most known today for his groundbreaking science fiction novels; he has sometimes been called the "father of science fiction", a title that has also been given to Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.

In addition to his fame as a writer, he was prominent in his lifetime as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. As a futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering before these subjects were common in the genre. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction", while Charles Fort called him a "wild talent".

Pierre-Jules Hetzel (French: [ɛtsɛl]; 15 January 1814 – 17 March 1886) was a French editor and publisher celebrated for his extraordinarily lavishly illustrated editions of Jules Verne's novels, highly prized by collectors.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (French: Vingt Mille Lieues sous Les Mers) is a science fiction adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne. It is considered a classic within its genres and world literature. It was originally serialised from March 1869 to June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel's French fortnightly periodical, the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation. A deluxe octavo edition, published by Hetzel in November 1871, included 111 illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou.

It was widely acclaimed on its release, and remains so; it is regarded as one of the premier adventure novels and one of Verne's greatest works, along with Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Michael Strogoff. Its depiction of Captain Nemo's submarine, Nautilus, is regarded as ahead of its time, as it accurately describes many features of modern submarines, which in the 1860s were comparatively primitive vessels. Verne was inspired by a model of the French submarine Plongeur, which he saw at the Exposition Universelle in 1867.

From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes (French: De la Terre à la Lune, trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes) is an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post–American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people – the Gun Club's president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet – in a projectile with the goal of a Moon landing. Five years later, Verne wrote a sequel called Around the Moon. There are two modern unabridged English translations by Walter James Miller (1978) and Frederick Paul Walter (2010).

Around the Moon (French: Autour de la Lune, 1869), also translated as Circling the Moon and All Around the Moon, is the sequel to Jules Verne's 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon. It is a science fiction tale which continues the trip to the Moon that was only begun in the first novel. Later English editions sometimes combined the two under the title From the Earth to the Moon and Around It. There are two modern unabridged English translations by Frederick Paul Walter (2010) and David Petault (2024).

From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon served as the basis for the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon by French director Georges Méliès.

The literary genre of science fiction is diverse, and its exact definition remains a contested question among both scholars and devotees. This lack of consensus is reflected in debates about the genre's history, particularly over determining its exact origins. There are two broad camps of thought, one that identifies the genre's roots in early fantastical works such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (earliest Sumerian text versions c. 2150–2000 BCE). A second approach argues that science fiction only became possible sometime between the 17th and early 19th centuries, following the Scientific Revolution and major discoveries in astronomy, physics, and mathematics.

Science fiction developed and boomed in the 20th century, as the deep integration of science and inventions into daily life encouraged a greater interest in literature that explores the relationship between technology, society, and the individual. Scholar Robert Scholes calls the history of science fiction "the history of humanity's changing attitudes toward space and time ... the history of our growing understanding of the universe and the position of our species in that universe". In recent decades, the genre has diversified and become firmly established as a major influence on global culture and thought.

Alexander Romanovich Belyaev (Russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Беля́ев, [ɐlʲɪkˈsandr rɐˈmanəvʲɪtɕ bʲɪˈlʲæɪf]; 16 March [O.S. 4 March] 1884 – 6 January 1942) was a Soviet Russian writer of science fiction. His works from the 1920s and 1930s made him a highly regarded figure in Russian science fiction, often referred to as "Russia's Jules Verne". Belyaev's best known novels include Professor Dowell's Head, Amphibian Man, Ariel, and The Air Seller.