Silence Please

{{Infobox short story

| name = Silence Please

| image =

| caption =

| author = Arthur C. Clarke

| title_orig =

| translator =

| country = United Kingdom

| language = English

| series = Tales from the White Hart

| genre = Science fiction

| published_in = Science-Fantasy

| publication_type = Magazine

| publisher = Nova Publications

| media_type =

| pub_date = Winter 1950

| english_pub_date =

| preceded_by =

| followed_by = Big Game Hunt

| preceded_by_italics =

| followed_by_italics =

}}

"Silence Please" is the title of two science fiction short stories by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. The first was published in 1950 under the pseudonym Charles Willis. The second was used as the introductory story for Clarke's collection Tales from the White Hart.{{cite book|last=Clarke|first=Arthur C.|title=Tales from the White Hart|url=https://archive.org/details/talesfromwhiteha00clar|url-access=registration|year=1957|publisher=Ballantine Books|location=London|page=Forward}}

The White Hart story describes the efforts of a brilliant college student to design a machine that would produce a field of absolute silence. The gadget is then used in a prank, with tragic results.{{cite book|author=Arthur C. Clarke|title=The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2cqEEEetnyQC&pg=PT223|date=2 June 2011|publisher=Orion|isbn=978-0-575-09877-0|page=223}}

The magazine version is set in the distant future and has elements of satire of Labour policies. The name of the invention is the same, though the reason for its failure is different.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

The "Fenton Silencer" described in the stories uses the same phase-inversion principle found in modern noise-canceling headphones.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

The story was one of two works by Clarke translated by Hungarian writer and politician Árpád Göncz: the other was 2001: A Space Odyssey.{{cite book|author=Árpád Göncz|title=Voices of Dissent: Two Plays|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pcZbT89LdAYC&pg=PA9|year=1989|publisher=Bucknell University Press|isbn=978-0-8387-5142-8|pages=9–}}