The first science fiction film, titled A Trip to the Moon (scene pictured) and based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, was released in France.

Science fiction is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, mutants, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition.

A Trip 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, and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. Méliès leads an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis.

From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 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. The 2 modern unabridged English translations were done by Walter James Miller in 1978 and Frederick Paul Walter in 2010.

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright.