Laurence Manning (January 1, 1899 – April 10, 1972) was a Canadian science fiction author.
Manning was born in St. John, New Brunswick and attended Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the 1920s he moved to the United States. In the USA, he lived primarily on Staten Island, where he began writing short stories for several pulp science fiction magazines. After teaming with SF writer Fletcher Pratt in "City of the Living Dead" in the May, 1930 issue of Science Wonder Stories, he wrote "The Voyage of the 'Asteroid'", which appeared in the Summer 1932 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, and The Man Who Awoke, a series of stories that was later published as a novel.
He was a founding member of the American Rocket Society, serving as both president and editor. For his involvement in the Society, Manning is recognized by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum as an early rocketry pioneer. Manning retired from the American Rocket Society in the mid 1940s, stating that rocketry had 'grown up', and was no longer a place for amateurs. In 1961, Manning was awarded a lifetime membership in the Society, that award being presented by then Vice President of the US Lyndon B. Johnson. Manning gave up his successful writing career at the end of 1935 and devoted his time to a mail order nursery business he owned and managed. Apart from several short stories in the 1950s (Good-Bye, Ilha!, Mr. Mottle Goes Pouf, Men on Mars), he never wrote any more science fiction. However, he was the author of a successful book on gardening, The How and Why of Better Gardening (1951). Manning had three children: Helen Louise, Dorothy, and James Edward. He lived in Highlands, New Jersey from 1951 until his death in 1972.