Laurence Manning

Who was Laurence Manning?

Laurence Manning 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 also translated at least one German-language story for Hugo Gernsback's magazines.

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.