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you may not have known that they make up only a small portion of Verne's 54-part 'Voyages Extraorinaires' series.

3) Edgar Allan Poe

Poe was born in 1809, and is known by many to have been a morbidly depressed and sickly alcoholic. He married his cousin when she was thirteen. Her early death likely contributed to the themes of his work.

Although Poe is best known for Gothic horror stories like 'The Black Cat,' 'The Masque of the Red Death,' and 'The Pit and the Pendulum,' he can be credited with some good science fiction as well. 'The Balloon Hoax' is a story about the first transatlantic balloon voyage; 'The Power of Words' is a post-apocalyptic and philosophical exploration of the meaning of happiness; and 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' is about a sea adventure. Poe also dabbled in the sciences directly: 'Eureka: an Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe' is a fascinatingly puzzling look at Poe's direct interpretations of astronomy.

4) H. G. Wells

Wells was born in 1866 to a shopkeeper and a domestic servant - 'lowly' beginnings for such an influential science fiction writer. Wells is most credited with giving the themes that are popular today their original footing.

Wells is best known for his early works. His novella 'The Time Machine' popularized vehicle-based time travel, although in this case, the vehicle moved through time alone, and not space. The idea of vehicular time travel was cemented in the cultural consciousness by this story.

'The War of the Worlds' was the first story of hostile alien invasion ever written, so old that giant tripod robots were described attacking horses and carriages! This is also the story that caused mass panic when a rewritten version was aired on American radio in 1938. 'Independence Day,' 'Mars Attacks,' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' can be considered creative rewrites at best.

'The First Men in the Moon,' 'The Island of Dr. Moreau,' and 'The Invisible Man,' are three slightly less popular, but no less fascinating, works by this author.

5) Arthur C. Clark

Moving on to more modern authors, we reach Arthur C. Clark (born in 1917), most well known for collaborating with Stanley Kubrick on the '2001: A Space Odyssey' film, and writing the accompanying novel. The film was based on one of Clark's short stories, then expanded into novel form and released a short time after the move. While 'Odyssey' is a supremely popular science fiction title, it and its sequel, '2010,' are the only novels Clark is famous for.

6) George

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