Planets in science fiction and it is extremely hostile to life. Various planets of the Solar System were used as settings for science fiction stories in the first half of the 20th century; but dissatisfaction with the limits imposed by science led many writers early on to forsake the Solar System for fictional planets around distant stars. As increasing knowledge of the Solar System made the prospects of life in the vicinity of Earth marginal at best, the extrasolar planet has become almost the only venue for contemporary science fiction. In many works of science fiction, planets are only described casually, as points of
Gustav Holst which "Swansea Town", with its "sophisticated tone", is deemed by Dickinson to be the most memorable. Holst downplayed such music as "a limited form of art" in which "mannerisms are almost inevitable"; the composer Alan Gibbs, however, believes Holst's set at least equal to Vaughan Williams's "Five English Folk Songs" of 1913. Holst's first major work after "The Planets" was the "Hymn of Jesus", completed in 1917. The words are from a Gnostic text, the apocryphal Acts of St John, using a translation from the Greek which Holst prepared with assistance from Clifford Bax and Jane Joseph. Head comments on