Anthony Burgess (b. 1917) is a famous English writer, author of many novels (including A Clockwork Orange), short stories, and film scripts. He is also a scholar of Shakespeare. In the story “The Muse,” written in 1968, Burgess depicts the flight of Paley, a literary scholar of the future, into the past, to the England of Queen Elizabeth I. However, as the story makes clear, such an England exists only in the imagination, and not in reality. The author treats with obvious irony the possibility of penetrating the secrets of the creative process. This story is a kind of parody of the science fiction genre.