Where did all the goblins go?

[mhagain]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

But I have proof that orcs outlived Sauron: Tolkien in his Letters to his son Christopher repeatedly referred to "orcs on both sides of the war" and such like; apparently, they merged with the races of Men.

Oh you wit.

On a serious note, the only hard evidence we seem to have is that orcs were certainly capable of outliving Melkor (when Sauron had also - initially - surrendered).

In the absence of any statement either way, it's quite reasonable to assume that if they were capable of outliving Melkor, outliving Sauron would have been a relative doddle. If one were able to pin down JRRT today and put the question to him, I suspect he'd answer either "preposterous! of course they obviously did!" or "preposterous! of course they obviously didn't!"

Hmmmm - I wonder does "The New Shadow" have anything to say on the matter? Plus I seem to recall either a letter or essay where he said straight up that there would not have been a direct cut off from Sauron's reign to Aragorn's, and that there was still a lot of evil to be rooted out and destroyed.