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Jules Verne is arguably one of the most misunderstood writers of the entire French literary tradition. Although ranked as the fifth most-translated author of all time (behind Lenin, Agatha Christie, Walt Disney, and the Bible--according to a UNESCO poll), Verne and his Voyages extraordinaires (1863-1910; translated as Extraordinary Voyages, 1874-1923) have, until very recently, been persistently denied any literary recognition in France. And in America, where everyone has heard of him but nobody actually reads his novels anymore, Verne has become an unstudied yet ubiquitous cultural icon--"The Father of Science Fiction," "The Seer of the Space Age," and "The Inventor of the Nautilus." But neither in his homeland nor in most countries around the world have Verne and his works been treated for what they truly are: in the history of literature, Verne's Voyages extraordinaires constitutes the birth of a unique, hybridized form of novel. This new brand of fiction, a forerunner of what would eventually evolve into the genre called science fiction, could be described as "scientifically didactic Industrial Age epic" or, more simply--as the author himself chose to label it--the roman scientifique (scientific novel).
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