I finished Future Imperfect yesterday afternoon. It was good, but… odd.
James Gunn (at least as a writer) was an angry man. I suppose that part of the issue might be that these stories were written in the mid-50s, so his ideas of gender roles and feminism were probably quite a bit different from yours or mine, but I don’t think that really accounts for everything. For example, the first story in the book is about a man who comes to the conclusion (through logical reasoning) that women are actually an alien species, slowly taking over the world. That night, he dies mysteriously of a heart attack. Another is about a man who inadvertently destroys humanity — shortly after an effective male oral contraceptive has been invented, he publishes an honest book about the realities of child rearing, aimed at a male audience. Within weeks, the birthrate (technically the rate of conception, I guess) drops to 0.
Not all the stories are about misogyny; one very clever story is about a woman who feels that she’s being hunted by a being from another dimension. She keeps being sent to psychiatrists who try to disabuse her of this absurd notion, but she remains convinced. She makes sure to always be with the psychiatrists when the beast finally reaches her, so that it will eat them. Another clever story is about an insurance broker paid 25 million dollars to insure the existence of a race of super-intelligent mutants on another planet, for 100 million dollars. He agrees, and then goes to the other planet, where the mutants are being ruthlessly oppressed. The story is all about how his wealth of experience and common sense are able to resolve the issue where the mutants’ super intelligence was insufficient.
Overall, I liked the book, although some of the more blatantly misogynistic stories were a little bit uncomfortable. Now I’m reading Women Writing Science Fiction as Men, and anthology of short fiction, edited by Mike Resnick.