Memoir of a Paperback Writer and The Philosopher's Stone

This novel is the fictional memoir of Charles Michael Kaufman, a lifelong Wisconsin resident and graduate of the U.W.-Madison who, after a thirty year career as a high school teacher, wins a major Powerball Lottery jackpot in 2006, amounting to about sixty million dollars in a lump sum, after deducting taxes. Over the following twenty years he parlays this fortune into a personal worth of several billion, with the help of his "sorcerer's apprentices," his much younger prot¿g¿s, six brilliant scholars, three male and three female, who sometimes deceive him, but always work together to ensure the financial success of the Kaufman businesses. In the ears covered by this memoir, Kaufman provides commentary and descriptions of the "brave new world" in our not too distant future, the years up to the 2070's. Through his eyes we see bits and pieces of our own possible futures. This is a work of speculative fiction, science fiction, but is grounded firmly in real cutting edge contemporary scientific research and discoveries. The future world it depicts is not only imminently possible, but in some aspects probable.