Born in South Carolina, Gibson, 67, evaded the Vietnam draft by emigrating to Canada. He popularised the word cyberspace, using it in his first science fiction novel, Neuromancer (1984), which sold more than 6m copies. His most recent novel is The Peripheral. He is married, with two children, and lives in Vancouver.

When were you happiest?

I suspect that my happiest moments are about finding myself able to more deeply enjoy existence.

What is your greatest fear?

Now I’m older, the future suddenly looks far grimmer than anything I’d have imagined – not simply that it won’t contain me, but that it won’t contain, for instance, tigers.

What is your earliest memory?

Being in a peanut field with my mother, on a farm my parents rented in rural Tennessee, in 1950. Down a steep hill, a road. A black American panel truck driving quickly along.

What would your super power be?

Redistribution of wealth.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

My posture, which is that of a tall person wishing not to be.

What is your favourite word?

“Thing”, apparently. The harder I’m writing, the more imprecise my spoken language becomes.

Which book changed your life?

A two-volume Sherlock Holmes omnibus my mother gave me, when I was just able to read it.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My wife of 45 years, Deborah.

What is the worst job you’ve done?

Working in a factory that made very mediocre fibreglass boats. Toxic environment, very messy, itchy, taking advantage of immigrant labour, which I was.

What is the worst thing anyone’s said to you?

In my late teens someone told me – I assume to be cruel – that my third-grade teacher, of whom I’d always been immensely fond, had come to have nothing but contempt for me over my opinion of the Vietnam war.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

A paleontologist.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Procrastination.

To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?

A Pentagon technocrat who told me in 1969 exactly how the Soviet Union would collapse. I thought it was feel-good nonsense at the time.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Victorian London, though I imagine the experience would be traumatic.

How do you relax?

I look in charity shops, though I seldom buy anything. They are museums of quotidian humanity.

What is the closest you’ve come to death?

A freakish near-miss ricochet while pistol-shooting, aged 13. Or the time an officer of Franco’s Guardia Civil in Ibiza, in 1970, punctuated a rural roadside interrogation by casually shooting the dog we were with.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Perhaps the cumulative achievement of not having been an even bigger jerk?

Where would you most like to be right now?

On the Ramblas in Barcelona, un-jetlagged, having a coffee.

Tell us a joke

A man walks into a bar with a toad on his head. “What’s that?” asks the bartender. “I don’t know,” says the toad, “but it started as a wart on my ass.”