Somewhere between Galactica fandom and outright Trekkieness lies our love for the worlds of people like Bruce Sterling: novelist and short story writer, co-Gibson-ite, Wired writer/blogger. This weekend, Sterling launched the Imaginary Gadgets Project, an online compendium (happy Monday, Mr. Dictionary) of, as Sterling puts it, “the weirdest things imaginable,” all relics of our “speculative culture.”

First up is the Antikythera Device, which Sterling describes as a “bronze, crank-driven geared orrery in a wooden box,” a description that makes about as much sense to us as “boxing the Threes after the DRADIS contact” once did. But just as that became clear as tylium, so too, we’re sure, will all of Sterling’s discovered and blogged-about devices. Best of all, everyone’s encouraged to submit their own gadgets—in categories from “critical designs” (“design work never intended for production”) to “classic science fiction gadgets: blasters, ray-guns, jet-packs, time machines.”

I’m interested in gadgets that illuminate speculative thought. I’m especially looking for imaginary constructs at the edges of the thinkable. Mere “weirdness” is parochial. The “impossible” is trivial. I’m searching for gadgets that are mind-stretching — so as to explore the set of possible stretches. These are the “imaginary gadgets” that the imaginative can “use.”

So get cracking on that alternate future history. We’ll be focusing on the fast-typing breakfast-serving joke-finding architecture-loving robot assistant.

Welcome to the Imaginary Gadgets Project [Wired via Core77]