Despite best efforts, some errata is bound to slip through the cracks, and our fellow sci-fi fans are the right ones to provide corrections. The list is in reverse chronological order, with the most recently discovered at the top.

Second edition 2014

No errata have been found in the second edition so far.

First edition 2012

Page: 283 Padmé is not Leia

On page 283, we bemoaned the fact that the birthing interface only contained information “about Leia; monitoring of the twins is not evident.” But, duh, Leia is one of the twins, we meant that the information displayed is about Padmė.
—Good catch, Yuan-Yuan Sun!

Tuvok: Reassigned?

In the chapter on medical interfaces we wrote that Tuvok was the science officer. That was not his job. (Hopefully we didn’t imply that all Vulcans should be science officers because of their culture’s bent toward logic, that would be wrong.) In fact, Tuvok served as the tactical, security, and “second” officer aboard Voyager.
—Good catch, Jonathan Ong Yao!

The Matrix is REAL

On page 35 we implied that the command-line interface that Trinity uses to hack into the power station in The Matrix Reloaded is fictional, but turns out it’s not. It’s a program called nmap and it’s as real as real gets. Not only that, but it’s actually used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, so she was even using it correctly. And it’s been seen all over sci-fi: Die Hard 4, Bourne Ultimatum, and Battle Royale, among others.
—Good catch, Robert Beardsley!

Page 78: Mixed-up captions

We mixed up the captions between The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Serenity (2005) when discussing the look of their volumetric projections. We do not want to actually see that mash-up.
—Good catch, Jonathan Ong Yao!

Page 136: DaiMon is not a name

We treated the “DaiMon” in “DaiMon Bok” like a first name, rather what it is, his rank. So to say, “To use the Thought Maker, DaiMon sets it on a table…” is kind of like us saying of Jean-Luc, “To express his frustration, Captain facepalmed.”
—Good catch, Stephanie Aaron!

Page 248: Kardassian is not a thing

When describing the action behind Figure 11.31, we wrote that the Enterprise-D team was rehearsing with holodeck replicas of the “Kardassian” tunnels. This was not a reference to the inexplicably-famous Kardashian sisters. It was a regrettable typo.
—Good catch, James Mulholland!

Page 50: Curse market differentiation!

On page 50 when discussing nonrectangular displays, we said that OLED screens were still in the laboratory, and not on the market. Turns out one high-end phone with a circuluar OLED screen has been released to market, and as far back as 2008! Behold the round sci-fi beauty of the Motorola AURA. (In our defense, it’s not available in the States.)
—Good catch, Marc Biebusch!

Page 51: Wrong Author, Author!

On page 51 when discussing transparent displays, we said that Things to Come was an adaptation of Jules Verne novel. As the movie poster clearly shows, the novel and screenplay were actually by H.G. Wells, the seminal English science fiction author who wrote a generation after Verne.
—Good catch, Marc Biebusch!

Page 238: Not an Invisible Fire Planet

In the Learning chapter we mistyped the name of the vacation planet in The Fifth Element. We’d typed “Flogiston Paradise,” which would actually referece an outdated scientific theory. The correct name of the liner is “Fhloston Paradise” that orbits the planet Fhloston.
—Good catch, James Mulholland!

Figure 2.11: The “other” joystick

In Star Trek: Insurrection, we misquoted Riker. He didn’t ask for the “manual weapons interface,” as we wrote on page 26. What actually happened was this: After using the “ramp scoops” to suck up pockets of highly volatile “metreon gas”, he instructs the ship’s computer that he needs to “access manual steering column” to pilot the Enterprise in front of the enemy ships and use the joystick trigger to disperse the gas, laying an explosive trap.
—Good catch, James Mulholland!

Figure 3.24e: One Doctor Who Episode Off

The figure shows Jabe, a humanoid plant being from the Forest of Cheem, checking Doctor Who’s race, after a scan from a device. The episode is incorrectly identified as “Rose” when in fact it is from episode 2 of season 1, “The End of the World.”
—Good catch, Nick Caldwell!

Chapter 11, pages 237-8: Pesky Kryptonian names

Superman’s father is incorrectly described as “Kal-El.” That’s actually Superman’s given name on Krypton. Superman’s father’s name is actually “Jor-El.”
—Good catch, Nik Gervae!

Found something not on this list? Contact us and we’ll check it out. If it’s genuine errata, we’ll post it here. Be sure to let us know how you’d like to be credited: By name, by twitter handle, by epithet. If you’d like us to include a link to a (SFW) website, we’ll include that, too.