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 wrath. In 1912 Holst composed two psalm settings, in which he experimented with plainsong; the same year saw the enduringly popular "St Paul's Suite" (a "gay but retrogressive" piece according to Dickinson), and the failure of his large scale orchestral work "Phantastes". Holst conceived the idea of "The Planets" in 1913, partly as a result of his interest in astrology, and also from his determination, despite the failure of "Phantastes", to produce a large-scale orchestral work. The chosen format may have been influenced by Schoenberg's "Fünf Orchesterstücke", and shares something of the aesthetic, Matthews suggests, of Debussy's "Nocturnes" or "La