[alatar]

Could be hallucinating, but think that someone once said something like if the gorilla did not exist, then surely we would have created it.

Guessing that if Professor Tolkien did not create Middle Earth, then someone would have filled the void with something similar - not an exact copy, yet satisfying the same need for a British fantasy mythology. Maybe elves would have been little creatures and goblins more friendly - dunno.

Something that I found scary it that (I think, again relying on a sub-par memory) Strider could have been named "Trotter." If that's how the final version went out, we would never have thought of Aragorn any other way. A major change for us now, but not enough to affect the timeline. You'd be as geeked out about Viggo being Trotter as you may have been when he was Strider.

So, anyway, the change in timelines is too far back for me to accurately see the consequences, but would guess that most of us would be here, now, discussing The Emperor of the Ring.