About 3feed

3feed

3feed is a Persian-language online magazine devoted to speculative fiction, published from Tehran, Iran. Founded in 2014, it serves the community of Iranian writers, critics and readers working in science fiction, fantasy and horror, genres that have historically occupied a small and often marginal place in Persian literature. The magazine is edited by Farzin Souri and functions as the publishing voice of Iran's Speculative Fiction Group, the organised community of genre writers and fans formerly known as the Fantasy Academy. International coverage of the Iranian genre scene has described 3feed as the chief online science fiction publication in Iran, the platform through which the country's speculative fiction community speaks to itself and, occasionally, to the wider world.

A magazine for a young genre scene

To place 3feed, it is necessary to understand how young organised speculative fiction is in Iran. Iranian writers and critics interviewed about the field trace its first stirrings to the 1920s and 1930s: the short stories of Sadegh Hedayat, who also wrote what is remembered as the first Iranian zombie story, and Abdolhossein Sanatizadeh's 1934 novel Rostam in the Twenty-Second Century, generally identified as the first science fiction novel in Iran. For most of the twentieth century, however, the genre in Persian consisted largely of translations from European literatures rather than original creation, and it was habitually classified as children's literature.

Original Iranian speculative fiction written consciously as genre fiction, by writers who knew the genre's motives and methods, is, in the words of its own practitioners, traceable only to the early years of the twenty-first century. A new generation began publishing science fiction, fantasy and horror for adult readers roughly a decade before the scene attracted international attention, working through literary groups, prizes and, significantly, online magazines and websites. 3feed, founded in 2014, is a product of that moment: an internet-native Persian magazine created by and for a community that had no established print home.

Voice of the Speculative Fiction Group

3feed's institutional identity is its defining feature. The Egyptian Society for Science Fiction, recording its engagement with the Iranian scene, identified Farzin Souri as the editor-in-chief of the Iranian science fiction magazine 3Feed, described it as the chief online sci-fi publication in Iran, and called it the mouthpiece of the Speculative Fiction Group, in Persian Goruh-e Adabiyat-e Gomanehzan. The group, formerly known as the Fantasy Academy, is the organised body of Iran's genre community, counting among its members writers and critics such as Farzad Khalilyan, Sima Siahposh and the horror and fantasy author Behzad Ghadimi.

A mouthpiece magazine performs several jobs for such a community. It publishes and reviews the community's work, carries its criticism and essays, announces its activities, and gives a dispersed readership a common address. In a literary culture where speculative fiction has struggled for shelf space and critical recognition, that common address has an importance beyond any single article: it demonstrates, continuously, that the genre exists in Persian as a living practice rather than an imported curiosity.

Contents: fiction, criticism and genre scholarship

The documented contents of 3feed centre on speculative fiction itself: the stories, criticism and discussion of the Iranian genre community. Farzad Khalilyan, a young writer and critic of the scene, is recorded as having written about speculative fiction in Shegeftzar, Fantasy Comic, 3feed, Dystopian and other sites and magazines, a list that places 3feed in the small constellation of Persian venues where genre criticism appears. Practitioners describe the community's aims in terms that a magazine directly serves: improving the quality of the work by knowing the speculative fiction genre and its motives, and building a readership that understands what the genre can do.

The community around the magazine has also built reference tools for itself, including a Farsi-language science fiction and fantasy dictionary, and has hosted essay calls and offline events. Such infrastructure matters in a field whose terminology, history and canon cannot be taken for granted. A term coined or translated in a community dictionary, an essay solicited through a community magazine, an event announced to a community readership: these are the mechanisms by which a genre scene reproduces itself, and 3feed sits at the centre of them as the group's publishing voice.

The community the magazine serves

The writers associated with 3feed's circle illustrate the scene it documents. Zoha Kazemi, described as Iran's most published science fiction novelist, came to the genre after four literary novels, publishing the dystopian pandemic novel Pine Dead and a succession of speculative works including the Noofe Award-recognised Death Industry, The Juliet Syndrome, Rain Born, published in English in London in 2020, and Time Rider. Behzad Ghadimi, a leading horror and dark fantasy writer and a Speculative Fiction Group member, has promoted the genre through books that won Speculative Fiction Awards and through television, newspaper and magazine appearances. Farkhondeh Fazel Bakhsheshi, owner of Ahang-e-Ghalam Publishing House, is a leading publisher of science fiction in Iran whose books form the basis of academic studies of the field.

Prizes form part of the same ecosystem. The Noofe literary award, held annually by the Sefid online magazine, recognises speculative writing, and community members describe awards, workshops and literary groups as the instruments by which the genre has become known to readers in recent years. Academic attention has followed: theses on Iranian science fiction are now written, usually in comparative literature. 3feed's role in this landscape is that of house journal to a movement, recording and arguing for a literature still establishing its credentials.

An outward face: Samovar and regional exchange

Although 3feed publishes in Persian for Iranian readers, its position in the scene has made it a point of contact with the wider genre world. In February 2019 the Samovar blog, which covers speculative fiction in translation, published an interview with Farzin Souri as the magazine's editor-in-chief, an exchange arranged through the Egyptian Society for Science Fiction's regional networking. The Egyptian society's records present that interview as part of its effort to build cooperation with like-minded groups around the region.

Iranian practitioners themselves advocate such exchange. In roundtable discussion, members of the scene proposed translating work between Arabic and Farsi, creating an award for Middle Eastern speculative writers, and holding joint events and gatherings, arguing that translation, collaboration and roundtables would open new doors. A community magazine is the natural instrument of that programme: it is where translated work can appear, where calls and awards are announced, and where a national scene presents itself to its neighbours.

Online publishing and the Persian genre readership

3feed's online form is itself significant. Iran's speculative fiction pioneers describe publishing online, in different magazines and websites, as the way the modern genre began, because the internet allowed writers to reach readers without persuading a print publisher to take a risk on an unproven category. An online magazine has no print run to sell through and no newsstand to stock it; its costs are editorial rather than industrial, and it can serve a readership that is small in national terms but concentrated and committed.

That readership skews young. Practitioners observe that young people in Iran are markedly more interested in science fiction and fantasy than older readers, and that the genre's long-standing classification as children's literature created a misunderstanding its writers are still correcting: speculative fiction in Persian now addresses adults, and its community writes literary criticism, maintains a dictionary and runs awards to prove it. A magazine addressed to that readership is simultaneously a publication and an argument about what Persian literature can include.

Themes and ambitions

The ambitions voiced by 3feed's community are consistent across its public statements. Writers describe speculative fiction as a literature of possibility and warning, rooted in science, capable of giving genuine hope and genuine caution; as a diverse realm in which readers who feel odd can find their own place and their own people; and as a field in which neglected books should be translated and other voices heard. Improving craft through knowledge of the genre's history and motives is a stated collective goal, and one that a critical magazine directly advances by publishing essays, reviews and discussion alongside fiction.

Collaboration across the region's languages is a second stated ambition, and diversity within the field a third. These are the goals of a scene still building its institutions, and they explain the weight placed on a community magazine: in the absence of large commercial genre publishing, the magazine is the institution.

Place in Persian-language publishing

Persian-language magazines in Iran are dominated by general, literary and lifestyle titles, and speculative fiction has rarely had a dedicated periodical. 3feed fills that gap in digital form. The verified record of the magazine is concise but clear: founded in 2014 as a Persian-language magazine covering speculative fiction; edited by Farzin Souri; recognised internationally as the chief online science fiction publication in Iran and the mouthpiece of the Speculative Fiction Group, the successor body to the Fantasy Academy; and cited by the scene's own writers as one of the venues in which Persian speculative fiction criticism appears.

Within the history of Iranian letters, 3feed represents the moment a marginal genre acquired an organised voice. The scene it serves descends from Hedayat's experiments and Sanatizadeh's 1934 novel through decades of translation to a twenty-first-century community of novelists, publishers, comic creators and critics. That community's magazine, publishing in Persian from Tehran, is both its noticeboard and its banner.