The Father of Science Fiction?

This morning I came across a reference to the origins of science fiction in an unexpected context. I was reading The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow. In a chapter illuminating the forward-thinking progress made by France at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the authors cited Jules Verne as the father of science fiction. I always question these kind of statements, which can be tricky to prove. The authors mentioned that Verne was a predecessor to the British H.G. Wells. A quick check of their bibliographies backed up this statement: Verne published such titles as Journey to the Center of the Earth and From the Earth to the Moon in 1864-1865. Wells' first publication was in 1888, his Time Machine: An Invention dates from 1895. My research on Wikipedia drew my attention to the statement: "Verne, along with Hugo Gernsback and H. G. Wells, is often popularly referred to as the 'Father of Science Fiction'."
Well, the first thing I did was check out this Hugo Gernsback. Gernsback wasn't even born until until 1864. A native of Luxembourg (and no doubt a Francophone), Gernsback moved to the U.S. in 1905. Modern SF fans most likely remember him for his first name, given to the prestigous Hugo Award. He gets the appellation "Father of Science Fiction" and is often credited for creating the genre, because he founded and promoted Amazing Stories, the first commercial magazine dedicated to science fiction.
Meaning no disrespect to the worthy trinity of our science fiction fathers, I was more interested to discover who first started writing science fiction than in who established the genre niche in popular literature. Further research led me to The History of Science Fiction: A Chronological Survey by Agatha Taormina. Taormina divides the origin of science fiction into stages: prehistory, pioneers, Wells and Bouroughs, early modern science fiction, the Golden Age, postwar era, and the modern age. Prehistory yielded some interesting results stretching back to elements of the fantastic in classical literature. But I was interested in the pioneer age, the first authors to pen tales that meet our modern genre requirements for science fiction. The result? The father of science fiction, in the sense of the first person to write a genuine science fiction novel, wasn't the father of science fiction, but the mother: Mary Shelly. Her Frankenstein : A Modern Prometheus, was first published in 1818. The wikipedia entry for this book notes that "many distinguished authors...consider this the very first science fiction novel."
If you're only familiar with Frankenstein as a monster movie icon, you're in for a treat when you discover the 1818 novel at the origin of this classic tale. Frankenstein is fantastic fodder for a future blog post. For now I'll leave you with highlights of Agatha Taormina's list of the earliest pioneers of science fiction. These authors are among my favorites.

• 1818 Mary Shelly (British) Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus
• 1836 Edgar Allen Poe (American) The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
• 1840's Nathaniel Hawthorne (American) "The Birthmark" (1843) and "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844)
• 1860/70's Jules Verne (French) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)