Solar System in fiction Solar System in fiction The Solar System and its various bodies (planets, asteroids, moons, etc.) were the earliest objects to be treated as fictional locations in works of science fiction. Among these, imaginary voyages to and explorations of Earth's Moon are found in seventeenth century literature. By the early twentieth century, following the increase in scientific and technological development spurred by the Industrial Revolution, fictional journeys to (or from) the Solar System's other planets had become common in fiction. Early literature regarding the Solar System, following scientific speculations dating back to the 17th century, assumed that every planet hosted its
Gustav Holst found his genuine voice in his setting of Whitman's verses, "The Mystic Trumpeter" (1904), in which the trumpet calls that characterise Mars in "The Planets" are briefly anticipated. In this work, Holst first employs the technique of bitonality—the use of two keys simultaneously. At the beginning of the 20th century, according to Matthews, it appeared that Holst might follow Schoenberg into late Romanticism. Instead, as Holst recognised afterwards, his encounter with Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" prompted his searching for a "musical idiom of the English language"; the folksong revival became a further catalyst for Holst to seek inspiration from other