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 opera, "At the Boar's Head", followed; neither had the immediate popular appeal of "A Moorside Suite" for brass band of 1928. In 1927 Holst was commissioned by the New York Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony. Instead, he wrote an orchestral piece "Egdon Heath", inspired by Thomas Hardy's Wessex. It was first performed in February 1928, a month after Hardy's death, at a memorial concert. By this time the public's brief enthusiasm for everything Holstian was waning, and the piece was not well received in New York. Olin Downes in "The New York Times" opined that "the new score seemed