For quite a long time I've been haunted by the idea of classification of authors. Here's what I think: There are three types of authors: The first type of author writes mostly about stuff he or she has experienced and even though his writing is not fully autobiographical, it nevertheless draws heavily on how they view the world and what they have taken from it. Let's have Toni Morisson, Fredderick Douglass and Amy Tan as an example. Or Fitzgerald. The second type writes about the things they haven't experienced and will most probably never experience, like fighting a dragon, researching on Mars etc. This type relies very much on imagination. These authors are like Dostoevsky in a sense; they make up a character completely different to themselves and their experience and they put them in a completely improbable situations in a fictitious world, like meeting Door in London Bellow in Neverwhere and they portray the char's behavior with all possible implications and consequences. Then there's a crossover type. This author draws heavily on his life experience but at the same time imbues their writing with themes and symbols so imaginative and surreal it sometimes borders on the fantasy genre, sometimes on plain fiction. Kafka and Murakami are a great example of this. Carol Berge's Transformation is Fredderick Douglass meets magic, demons and combat.
A lot of it just has to do with the nature of speculative fiction. No one has experienced life on distant planets or going to a school for wizards, so there must be some speculation involved.
For this story I'm writing I would be all three or at least the first two. There characters are all based on people I know, set partly in a fantasy world that I would never be able to see or do things I will never be able to do.