There are those who believe that all fiction is fan fiction. Because the earliest stories written down were actually reinterpretations of oral tales told around campfires, then, on some level, when Homer created The Odyssey, that was his fanfic of quasi-historical mythological tales that had been heard by millions of people for hundreds of years. Finding an origin point where fan fiction (aka fanfic) and true, “original” fiction are spiritually different is perhaps impossible. And, if we were to pop back in time in the TARDIS or Doc’s DeLorean and bring Shakespeare to the present, he would have no idea what you were even talking about. Great stories almost naturally provoke audiences to want to create more great stories. Or as Michael Chabon put it in his 2008 book Maps and Legends: “All novels are sequels; all influence is bliss.”
That said, today most people know the difference between fanfic and, well, not fanfic. But how? Philosophically, there may be no real difference, but in reality, there is. And the key to that delineation, which creates a difference, requires a very brief history lesson.
