re: #1303 Cato the Elder

Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic, but if you read his famous preface to LoTR, you’ll see that he “cordially detested allegory”. People have tried to force the story into one schema or another, but he was too good a storyteller for that. He was also keenly aware of and deeply schooled in pre-Christian European mythos. So anyone who claims to have a key to the “hidden meaning” of the books is deluded. That’s what makes LoTR orders of magnitude more compelling than any rival in the fantasy genre: it truly is a world unto itself.

That, and the mastery of language, the attention to detail, the thoroughly worked-out languages, et cetera.

I read books with an editor’s eye, and discrepancies pop out at me like fireflies in the dusk. I have yet to find even a minor slip-up in LoTR after at least half a dozen complete readings.

Paeans!

I’ve found Cordwainer Smith’s world to be also well thought out, although not as complete as Tolkein’s.
And Smith (really Paul Linebarger) wrote true science fiction, not fantasy.