Manuel Antonio de Rivas was a Franciscan friar in Mérida, a Spanish colonial town on the Yucatán Peninsula. Details of his life are sketchy, though there are court documents that prove that in the 1770s he was accused of heresy. He is best known for an account of a journey of lunar discovery, Syzygies and Lunar Quadratures, which is credited as the first science fiction text written in the Americas. Biography Little is known of Rivas's life outside of the trial for heresy; his birth and death dates are unknown, though it appears he was already an old man by the time he was brought to trial. According to Rivas scholar Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado, he arrived in Yucatán in 1742, and soon started "making enemies and trouble for himself." He deviated from orthodoxy by believing, for instance, that heavenly bodies affected human behavior (denying free will), reading banned books, and criticizing the veneration of saints. Apparently he printed leaflets critical of his fellow churchmen and distributed them. His behavior was so offensive that he was put on trial in 1775, a trial which revealed his speculative book on lunar travel. He was accused of believing in astrology, of proposing a "branch of hell in the Sun's center," and of endorsing the heliocentrism of Nicolaus Copernicus. An accusation of sodomy was dropped quickly. His Syzygies and Lunar Quadratures was one of the main pieces of evidence; fortunately for him, the court judged it to be a fable, and charges were withdrawn. Syzygies and Lunar Quadratures Textual history The full title of Rivas's 11-folio booklet is translated in English as Syzygies and Lunar Quadratures Aligned to the Meridian of Mérida of the Yucatán by an Anctitone or Inhabitant of the Moon, and Addressed to the Scholar Don Ambrosio de Echevarria, Reciter of Funeral Kyries in the Parish of Jesus of Said City, and Presently Teacher of Logarithm in the Town of Mama of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Year of the Lord 1775. No actual date of composition is given in the manuscript. The manuscript was rediscovered in 1958 by Pablo González Casanova, "hidden among the dusty volumes of the National Archives in Mexico City"—in fact, among the documents compiled by the Inquisition pertaining to Rivas's trial. It was referenced in a 1977 study of Mexican literature, but was not commented on or published until 1994. An extensive study of Rivas