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''Mythago Wood'' is a fantasy novel written by Robert Holdstock that was published in the United Kingdom in 1984. The conception began as a short story written for the 1979 Milford Writer's Workshop; next a novella of the same name appeared in the September 1981 edition of ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction''. The full-length novel retained the same name and was subsequently released, beginning a series of novels referred to collectively as the "Mythago Wood cycle" or "Ryhope Wood series".〔Newman, Kim ''St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers'', ed. David Pringle (Detroit: St. James Press, 1996), pages 285-286.〕 ''Mythago Wood'' is set in Herefordshire, England in and around a stand of ancient woodland, known as Ryhope Wood. The story involves the internally estranged members of the Huxley family, particularly Stephen Huxley, and his experiences with the enigmatic forest and its magical inhabitants. ''Mythago Wood'' is a type of fantasy literature, especially the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction. It has received critical acclaim because of its prose, its forest setting, and its exploration of philosophical, spiritual and psychological themes. ''Mythago Wood'' won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1985. == Ryhope wood == Ryhope wood is a fantasy world or fictional realm created by Robert Holdstock for his novella ''Mythago Wood'', published during 1981, though it became more famous after his novel ''Mythago Wood'' was first published in 1984. The novels and novellas (but not short stories) in the ''Mythago Wood'' cycle (see subsection below) are all set in the world of Ryhope Wood, with the exception of ''Merlin's Wood'', which is set in a similarly magical "sister wood" of Brocéliande in Brittany. Ryhope Wood is an ancient woodland that has been undisturbed since the last ice age and appears no more than three square miles in area from the outside. Ryhope Wood is an example of a parallel universe that overlaps a section of the real world. The wood is much, much bigger on the inside than on the outside. Once penetrated, it grows larger, older and more unbearable as one approaches the heart of the wood.〔Langford, David ''Supernatural Fiction Writers, Second Edition, Volume 1'', ed. Richard Bleiler (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003), pages 445-453.〕〔Clute, John ''Look at the Evidence: Essays & Reviews'', (Ann Arbor: Liverpool University Press, 1995), page 111. This essay originally appeared in the May/June 1989 (issue 29) magazine Interzone.〕 Lavondyss is the name of the remote ice-age heart of Ryhope wood.〔 The forest is referred to by John Clute as an "abyssal chthonic resonator" because it creates and is home to myth-images, or mythagos, who are creatures (including animals, monsters and humans) generated from the ancient memories and myths within the subconscious of nearby human minds.〔Clute, John ''Look at the Evidence: Essays & Reviews'', (Ann Arbor: Liverpool University Press, 1995), page 111. This essay was published originally in the May/June 1989 (issue 29) magazine Interzone.〕 The book itself defines a mythago as a "myth imago, the image of the idealized form of a myth creature". Mythagos are dangerously real, but if any of them stray too far from the wood they slowly deteriorate and die. Because they are formed from human myths, they vary in appearance and character depending on the human memories from which they formed. For example, there may be, over a period, many different forms of King Arthur, Robin Hood, Herne the Hunter and others, all looking and acting differently, yet all with the same basic functions and all acting by the rules set by their defining myths.〔Moorcock, Michael ''Horror: The 100 Best Books'', ed. Jones, Stephen and Newman, Kim, (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc, 1998), page 274〕 Because the area around Ryhope Wood is sparsely populated there are few mythagos in the woodland, but because of his interest in the wood and his deliberate experiments in the 1930s George Huxley has succeeded in creating more mythagos than would normally be present in the wood at any one time, causing a greater than usual diversity within the wood. It is revealed in ''The Hollowing'', a sequel, that mythagos may be created by conscious thought and are drawn to their creators. Besides creating mythagos of living, breathing creatures, the wood can also generate ancient archetypal places, from castles to battlefields to ancient villages. These are referred to as Geistzones in ''Lavondyss'', the sequel to ''Mythago Wood''. The wood contains four tracks that lead to the heart of the wood and travellers who do not follow these tracks have extreme difficulty penetrating the wood. In addition to the four tracks Ryhope Wood contains "Hollowings", described as an "absence of magic" or pathways under the world. Hollowings function as wormholes by transporting mythagos and real human beings through space and time within the forest. Time travel occurs when travellers pass through Hollowings. Ryhope Wood magically repels outsiders by various means, including disorientation and physical defences such as thick, impenetrable scrub, huge lakes and raging rivers. There are also airborne defences to prevent aircraft from getting too close, such as vortices of air or air elementals that throw an aircraft off course. The wood has a slower rate of time than the outside world. For example, a day may pass in normal time, yet a traveller within the wood may have been there for weeks or longer. In addition, "Time Slows," areas subjected to extraordinarily slow passage of time, are revealed in ''The Hollowing''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mythago Wood」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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