language through their own efforts. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy In the universe of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, universal translation is made possible by a small fish called a "babel fish". The fish is inserted into the auditory canal where it feeds off the mental frequencies of those speaking to its host. In turn it excretes a translation into the brain of its host. The book remarks that, by allowing everyone to understand each other, the babel fish has caused more wars than anything else in the universe. The book also explains that the babel fish could not possibly have developed naturally and therefore proves the existence of God as its creator, which in turn proves the non-existence of God. Since God needs faith to exist, and this proof dispels the need for faith, this therefore causes God to vanish "in a puff of logic". Men in Black The Men in Black franchise possess a universal translator, which, as Agent K explains in the first film, Men in Black, they are not allowed to have because "human thought is so primitive, it's looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies." remarking “That kinda makes you proud, doesn’t it?” Neuromancer In William Gibson's novel Neuromancer, along with the other novels in his Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, devices known as "microsofts" are small chips plugged into "wetware" sockets installed behind the user's ear, giving them certain knowledge and/or skills as long as they are plugged in, such as the ability to speak another language. (The name is a combination of the words "micro" and "soft", and is not named after the software firm Microsoft.) Star Control In the Star Control computer game series, almost all races are implied to have universal translators; however, discrepancies between the ways aliens choose to translate themselves sometimes crop up and complicate communications. The VUX, for instance, are cited as having uniquely advanced skills in linguistics and can translate human language long before humans are capable of doing the same to the VUX. This created a problem during the first contact between Vux and humans, in a starship commanded by Captain Rand. According to Star Control: Great Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict, Captain Rand is referred to as saying "That is one ugly sucker" when the image of a VUX first came onto his viewscreen. However,