Of course ME isn't real! And the events depicted are no more real than those in every mythology (greek, egyptian, etc). Tolkien wanted it to be as realistic as possible, thus the creation of the Red Book, which was supposedly translated by the Professor. That would make Tolkien a simple mediator between the forgotten history he would have 'discovered' and today a technique already used in litterature during the Renaissance (Voltaire, I think). Many authors do anything to present their fiction as a depiction of real events, notably Michael Crichton. Speaking of him, you can read his novel 'Timeline' to get a theory on the existance of parallel universes.
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