Any Other World Will Do

* 2022 Benjamin Franklin Award – Silver Winner *

In a chance encounter on the overnight train from Paris to Barcelona, Vikram Bhat stumbles across a promising new recruit. Miles Townsend, an 18-year-old kid running away from a past he' d just as soon forget, is drawn to the older Indian man, dazzled by Barcelona, and smitten with the Hotel Kashmir' s bartender, Anna de Wit, a Surinamese grad student with a genius for languages and Vikram' s first recruit.

Miles and Anna have no idea they' re being recruited. They have no idea that Vikram is neither an Indian nor a man, or that he' s a few thousand light-years from home. He has a lot of secrets, it turns out. But he means well. When a series of bad decisions reveals the fact that Vikram isn' t the only one light-years from home— and this other one does not mean well— Miles and Anna become unwitting ambassadors to Vikram' s world, a place where the locals haven' t got their sh*t together any better than the people of Earth.

A unique coming-of-age story, Any Other World Will Do is inventive, irreverent science fiction, a wry commentary on the primal urge to flee our troubles and the romantic way we remember the journey.