It was on the first day of the New Year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Wells is best known for his science fiction novels and is often called a father of science fiction, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds.