A hard rain is falling on the suburban semi in Shepperton where JG Ballard has lived for half a century, imparting an eerie sheen to the ancient Ford Granada that lies beached at an odd angle in his drive.

Ballard is courteous and genial in a slightly donnish way. At 77, he takes his time assembling his thoughts, but they remain unflinching and provocative, expressed with the verbal tics of his colonial background. But time, the malleable stuff of his science fiction, is running out. After being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006, he sat down at his electric typewriter – “The computer age came too late for me” – and rapidly wrote his autobiography.