Community Property

Coppel, Alfred, 1921-2004Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 36K words
Chapters: 4

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Community Property by Alfred CoppelAuthor: Coppel, Alfred, 1921-2004,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2019

Editor's review

Alfred Coppel was a twentieth-century American author of science fiction and popular fiction. This story, "Community Property," has been reissued in digital form through Project Gutenberg and belongs to the public-domain short fiction. It is brief, with a brisk narrative pace, and carries the typical character of early science-fiction magazine shorts: premise first, clean twists, suited to being read in one sitting during spare moments. The main value of this electronic edition lies in accessibility: it places an easily lost older work into public reading space, making it available to general readers and genre-fiction enthusiasts. Note that the introduction attached to the Gutenberg entry mainly covers the platform's own history and does not summarize the plot, so readers should not expect specific content from it. Read it as a sample of mid-twentieth-century American popular short-story writing, or as light material for reading in English. Those expecting a substantial novel or a meticulously built world should adjust their expectations.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to finish a public-domain English short story in a short time
Enthusiasts interested in mid-twentieth-century American popular genre fiction
Learners who need light English source material for extensive reading practice
People studying what electronic texts Project Gutenberg has collected

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting the length of a novel and complex world-building
Beginning English readers who need detailed notes or a guide
Readers uninterested in the narrative pace of old-fashioned popular short stories

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the plot's direction, then look back at the setup clues planted at the beginning.
Record unfamiliar words in one place and look them up after finishing, so as not to interrupt the reading rhythm.
Compare with other public-domain short stories from the same period to observe common features of popular-magazine writing.
If used for English practice, retell the main storyline in your own words after reading.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this work a novel or a short story?

Judging by the length and format of the Gutenberg entry, it is a short work, suitable for reading in one or two sittings. The entry's introduction mainly covers the platform's history and gives no plot summary, so readers need not approach it expecting a novel.

Do I need to know the author's other works before reading this?

No. This is a standalone text that can be read independently, without background from the author's other works. If the reading sparks interest in Coppel's style, you can look up his other public-domain works for further reading.

Is the electronic edition suitable for intensive English reading?

It can serve as material for extensive reading or light intensive reading. The text is the original public-domain English, with no accompanying notes; when you meet unfamiliar expressions, it is best to mark them first and look them up after reading rather than stopping at every sentence, which would disrupt the short story's narrative rhythm.

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About the author

Coppel, Alfred, 1921-2004 Author

Alfred Coppel (1921–2004) was an American author of science fiction and popular fiction whose career spanned several decades, with works known for taut plotting and clear storytelling. Seven of his books are held in this collection: The Peacemaker, The Invader, Double Standard, Turnover Point, Turning Point, The Hills of Home, and Community Property. Judging from these titles, his writing touches on space adventure, future societies, and human conflict, and he was skilled at building suspense and twists within genre frameworks. Public information is limited, and little is known about the details of his life and career, yet these works show his steady output in mid-to-late twentieth-century genre fiction. Coppel's novels are direct in language and brisk in pace, suited to readers who enjoy traditional narrative and science-fictional imagination.