Jules Gabriel Verne (8 February 1828 - 24 March 1905) was a French author who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre. He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and The Mysterious Island (1875).