Well how would anyone know it’s the real thing if no one was alive when last it was seen?
Botox overdose.
The events of The Silmarillion are the heavily mythologized accounts of the colonization of Middle Earth by a highly advanced alien seedship. Upon arrival the ship’s primary AI, Eru Iluvatar, created subordinate AIs of various grades to manage the project. Including some that went rogue, such as AIs called Melkor and Sauron. And later a dangerous Trojan Horse program named Ungoliant activated and did immense damage. These AIs were embodied in clouds of nanotech microscopic machines, capable of taking on any shape desired and reforming if “destroyed”; later their programming decayed in many cases and they partially or completely lost shapechange capability.
At first a vast domed habitat was created on the surface as terraforming and stellar ignition went on; ( Arda’s Sun was clearly dead, otherwise it wouldn’t be in perpetual darkness in the First Age ) the “Two Lamps” and the “Two Trees” were artificial sources of heat and light for this habitat. Eventually, organic sentients were created, and caught up in the constant conflict. Eventually, the Sun was ignited, and the natural surface of Arda ( aka Middle Earth ) was colonized by the organics. Later, after a threatened invasion by the Numerorians, the original habitat was lifted off the surface of the planet and could no longer be reached by sailing upon the surface.
By this time Melkor ( now Morgoth ) had been successfully stripped of it’s nanocloud “body”, but had successfully downloaded itself into the deep level programs running Arda’s terraforming & life support; while successfully blocked from further control it could not be deleted without destroying the system. Meanwhile, the AI Sauron had decided to conquer Middle Earth, using various technologies and knowledge still available to it as an edge. This included the creation of “Rings of Power”; actually sophisticated computers with an associated ( normally invisible ) cloud of nanomachines controlled by an FTL link to the Ring ( a quantum mechanics based ansible system ) capable of effects that appear nearly magical. Such as forming a light bending array over the surface of the wearer, or in the case of the One Ring infiltrating and dominating the brains of organic life.
The Elves gained the knowledge to make similar Rings as part of his plan. He of course included Trojan Horses in the basic programming; that’s what the One Ring was supposed to use to dominate anyone wearing a Ring. Not being the original designer they lacked the knowledge to remove it. One such Ring included the Ring of Fire worn by Gandalf; it allowed the direction of an associated nanocloud that could take on a “flaming” appearance, and even imitate flame by “burning” objects ( actually disassembling them with nanoswarms ). In fact, this is the same pseudo-flame effect the rogue AIs known as Balrogs surround themselves with.
Sauron also downloaded his own AI into his Ring; this increased his processing power - but rendered him vulnerable to destruction if the Ring containing his core programming was destroyed.
As for the rest ? Orcs and Trolls and such are genetically engineered living weapons, which is why they are so universally nasty and loyal to the “evil side”; they were made that way. Sting glows near Orcs because it can detect their built in, organic command/control system that lets Morgoth and Sauron dominate them; it then activates the micro-LED array built into it’s surface. Barrow-Wights are corpses reanimated by a nanobot infestation. Nazguls have been infested with a permanent colony of nanobots from the Ring that corrupted them, which maintains them making them immortal; a defect in the programming has set the visible light cloak into permanent “On” mode. Gandalf and the other Wizards are lesser AIs in their nanocloud bodies, sent to help the organics resist Sauron. Eru’s noninterference programming prevent more direct action.
There’s your answer right there. The whole story is based on the travel accounts of Hobbits.
As such, every single reference to magic and supernatural forces can easily be accounted for with two words: PIPEWEED, and MUSHROOMS.
You go on an extended hike through unfamiliar terrain while eating every mushroom you see and smoking every herbaceous weed you can stuff into a pipe, you’ll probably see a lot of strange things too.
I’m pretty sure “pipe weed” is two words. I’d look it up, but I have decided to be arrogant today.
Well if you want to be nitpicky about it, pipe-weed is the correct way. 
Let’s just blame it all on John Roland.
Sorry, but I’m too arrogant today to respond to this.
ETA: I forgot that I came back into the thread to salute Der Trihs.
Terrifel’s Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology you see is indistinguishable from you being high.
That whole “Army of the Dead” thing? Fraternity prank gone awry. Elladan and Elrohir were all “You must venture into the spooooky caves and face the army of the dead! ooooooaaahhh!”
No one thought he’d fall for it, but Aragon was a bit dim, though. So they had to kip off and hire all the woodwoses they could find to throw on bedsheets and make moaning noises as “ghosts”.
That’s why you don’t see Elladan or Elrohir or any of the woses again in the story.
Hobbits and Dwarves were just folks who had a severe shortage of protein in their diet. Once their descendants started eating beef, fixed that, but gave most of 'em diabetes and high blood pressure.
Elves? World’s first metrosexuals.
Orcs? Fashion overreaction to the metrosexuals.
Bah. They were askin’ for it, dressing like that, the little hussies. Everyone knows orcs are foot-fetishists.
Witness Tom Benzedrine.
Glad you liked it.
I wonder if the OP’s challenge is possible WITHOUT evoking “super-technology” or any other SF-ish elements, sticking to things as they would’ve been had the Red Book really been written X years ago.
Some points already made do. Others don’t. That makes me curious.
The whole thing was written by Frodo, right? That immediately makes it suspect. You see, the whole Baggins family had a rather shady past. Bilbo got into all kinds of trouble with debt-collectors, and at one point was dragged off into the woods about to be killed when he was saved by a wandering old man, who fought off the thugs. The old man was a magician named Gandalf who built a reputation around superstitious folks as a wizard. Now Bilbo was a bit of a magician himself, and liked to show off his famous disappearing act. He attributes it to a magic ring, but there in fact was no such thing. This little detail was added in later to shoe-horn in a sense of fantastical whimsy.
Frodo was impressionable at a young age, and believed Bilbo’s outlandish stories. Bilbo was also teaching Frodo some of his magic tricks. But once Bilbo got old, he got tired of dodging his debts, so he fled his home and left it all to Frodo. Frodo was quite irritated, and developed Bilbo’s cynicism and paranoia. Just as he was himself planning to ditch Bag End and leave all his troubles to Sam, here comes Gandalf. Gandalf has come to repay the life debt owed by Bilbo. It seems Gandalf is not just an old vagrant, but a political spy. He aims to overthrow the current government of Gondor. And he needs Frodo’s help. Sam overhears everything, and Gandalf can’t risk any of this getting out, so he’s dragged along. Loyal to the end, Sam doesn’t say a word about any of this and propagates Frodo’s outrageous version of the events.
As they’re fleeing the shire, Merry and Pippin follow. They’re not gonna let a Baggins get away with his debt, but with some smooth talk, Frodo manages to convince them that he’s on his way to Rivendell, where he has all his treasures stored, so that he can pay them back. When they get to Rivendell, which is actually the meeting place for the rebellion, Merry and Pippin are captured and forced to join their cause, on pain of death. Once they got back to the shire at the end, they of course had no problem with Frodo rewriting it so they joined voluntarily out of some made-up friendship to Frodo.
The story on from here is mostly made-up. Denethor was eventually overthrown, and to appease the populace, the rebellion concocted some cock and bull story about him being possessed by an evil spirit named Sauron. The superstitious Gondorian people already had plenty of stories going around about evil spirits living in the nearby active volcano, so they fell for it easily. The area was populated by large crows, which due to exaggerated re-tellings of the tale turned into gigantic fell beasts with cloaked people riding them.
Since most people couldn’t read, the fact that the books were almost entirely fabricated went unnoticed until long after anyone would have remembered the events. Frodo and co came back and told their heroic tale to the townsfolk, and for a while everyone was so enchanted they forgot about the Baggin debts. But how soon people forget, and soon enough Frodo had to disappear again. He fled again to parts unknown, this time never returning. Sam, having much more business sense than Frodo, managed to work back and repay all the debts. He still kept his word and never blew his master’s cover though.
The traveling show of props & artwork from the LOTR movies came through Houston’s Museum of Natural Science a few years ago. They set it up next to the Hall of Paleontology. After wandering through that treasure trove as in a dream, one looked up to see a fossil of Quetzalcoatlus, hanging from the ceiling.
Surely, I’m not the only one who looked up & thought “Fell Beast!”
Arthur C Clarke’s “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” explains a lot about the elves. (Or maybe Gandalf said that.)
Well strangely enough it was not what Tolkien original envisioned as he described the Fell Beast but in a letter he did mention that it was hard not to see them as an over sized pterodactyl left over from an earlier age*. The Quetzalcoatlus of course had not yet been discovered and it is unclear if Tolkien was really aware of even pterodactyl when he was writing. As large as the Quetzalcoatlus got I think the Fell Beast is larger yet and have greater mass.
- please note: that is not a quote but a paraphrase from memory.
Fell Beasts are, clearly, just aircraft with the shark-style nose painting often seen in WWII-era fighter planes.
Slight aside, but there’s not actually that much that needs explaining in the books. Tolkien rarely describes anything as explicitly magic. For instance, it’s certainly possible to read the text as implying that Theoden’s torpor is due to a magic spell by Saruman broken by a counter-spell from Gandalf, but there’s actually nothing in the text that rules out purely mundane, psychological explanations. Same with the ringwraith-inspired fear, etc.
If you accept somewhat fantastic beasts (hobbits, orcs, ents, fell beasts, oliphants, Shelob, etc.), and above-average abilities (Shadowfax, Aragorn’s fighting prowess) then I believe the only unambiguous magic, as written, is:
The ring’s invisibility power.
Ringwraith’s appearance
Old Man Willow being mobile enough to trap people inside
The Barrow-wight
Gandalf’s fire tricks, including casting light from the end of his staff
The Balrog’s ability to be surrounded by fire/shadow (much of which could be ascribed to weird lighting in a frikkin’ cave)
Galadriel’s light
The Army of the Dead
The palantiri
Special visual effects at Sauron’s downfall and Saruman’s death
Possibly the strange fire-filled pits created by Sauron’s army during the seige of Minis Tirith.
Possibly the coincidence of Mt Doom deciding to erupt just after the ring was dropped inside.
Even Gandalf’s resurrection is ambiguously written: he could just have been lying there exhausted until he got his strength back.
I think it is. With apologies to Der Trihs, what he basically did was explain the fantasy elements in terms of science-fiction. My thoughts were more along the lines of the Elves & Dwarves having much better tech than the Hobbits & Eorlingas (with the Gondorians somewhere in between), and along the line some terms got introduced that succeeding scriveners did not savvy, and this began a process of distortion.
Not quite. For one thing, by “Red Book of Westmarch” I mean The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings (and possibly The Silmarillion–I’m not sure if that’s mean tot be part of the RBW). Bilbo wrote Hobbit and Book I of LotR. Merry wrote the LotR Prologue. Frodo wrote most of of Books II-VI; the exceptions being things like the Three Hunters’ song at Boromir’s funeral (clearly added by Gondorian redactors), the part of Book VI after Frodo goes West (for obvious reasons); I suspect he also edited parts of Frodo’s narrative in which he felt his master was beng too hard on himself, or giving him (Samwise) too much credit. The Appendices were largely added by Gondorian redactors, except for the parts clearly added by that old British philogist who also wrote the Prologue to Hobbit.