I still think it's as mythical as Harry Potter's Hogwarts. The focus of the story isn't a vanished kingdom. It's a storytelling framework for larger philosophical questions. If you place this in a REAL place, it gets tangled up with prejudices and knowledge; what you know of the place and what you think of the inhabitants.

For example, if I were to frame a story with Bush/Cheney as the evil-bad-guys and Saint Obama as the Sword O Deity who un-smites all that they've smote, most of my audience would be so wrapped up in their opinions of conservative Republicans and liberal-ish Democrats that they'd miss the much larger point (environmentalism.) If I set it on a galaxy far, far away, people can contemplate the problem without going into personalities.

Plato (or Socrates) says this explicitly in one of the writings... that if you want to make a tale, craft it in some place unknown to the audience.

-- Byrd
Moderator, Hall of Ma'at