Side Project: Bima Sakti
A reminder and an assurance for the 23rd century Indonesian interstellar empire. It is not forgotten.
A while back, me and
embarked on a side project called Bima Sakti, a science fiction setting with a rather simple premise: what if Indonesia established an interstellar empire and became the most powerful nation on Earth?We even made a whole Substack out of it:
If you go through the Substack, you might have noticed that it hasn’t been active in a while. And there’s a good reason for it. We’re both busy - personal stuff, other projects, you name it. Also, Scoot went through a winter hiatus of sorts.
But don’t worry, Bima Sakti has not been forgotten. This project has honestly been popping up in my head every now and then. I can’t promise new updates any time soon, but I have been thinking about it.
And perhaps this hiatus might have been a blessing-in-disguise. When I first started out on this project, I was still living in the United States. This is significant. Though at the time I had lived about half of my life in Indonesia, it had also been a while since I was in the islands of Nusantara. But now, I have been living in Jakarta for almost a year now. To summarize, a lot of things have changed, but a lot of things have stayed the same - including things that I have forgotten about. Now I have a tighter grasp of Indonesian culture than I did when first started this with Scoot.
But let us move on.
If you’re new to Bima Sakti, then feel free to subscribe. It doesn’t cost you anything. Here’s what we have so far:
Works of Fiction
We’ve put out some works of fiction. First is Peter Flannery of Little America, Scoot’s slice-of-life story about an American immigrant to Jakarta trying to hack-it in what is now the capital of the world.
There’s also my very own flash fiction, The View. Not to be mistaken for the talk show, this story involves a passenger to Jakarta witnessing the view of the LASK, Jakarta’s very own space elevator:
Encyclopedia Entry
There are also descriptive entries of the various locales to be found in the world of Bima Sakti. So far, we have two: the capital Jakarta and the prosperous colony world of New Aceh.
Worldbuilding Notes
Finally, we have the building blocks of Bima Sakti, the notes Scoot and I exchanged which serve as the basis in which we built (and are building) the setting. There are a couple of them, but here are some that I found to be the most important…
Those are just the highlights of what we have so far. For more information, check out the About Page of the Bima Sakti Substack.
I’ve also played around with the the NightCafe AI-image generator. So I will close with this one image of 23rd century Jakarta I got; enjoy:
-Michael P. Marpaung
Gotta say, as fellow SEAsians, this is very exciting. With a region rich in culture and history as our place in the world, where all of the East met with the West, that's still very much untapped for stories in genres such as these. Glad at least one of us is stepping up!
Good to see you posting again and no worries. Take all the time you guys need.
P.S. I got your book "Inquisitor's Promise" for my Birthday. I'm about a quarter through, great read so far.