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Loss Protocol
- Author
- Paul McAuley
- Narrator
- Matt Addis
- Publisher
- Orion
- Publish Date
- 12 February 2026
- Run Time
- 12 hours 18 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
'Loss Protocol is Paul McAuley on top form' KIM NEWMAN
'An eco-thriller like no other from one of Britain's best SF writers' THE GUARDIAN
'Which one feels realer, truer. The world we lived in most of our lives, or the world we dreamed up?'
Eight years after the catastrophic downfall of the cult his sister Izzy had joined, Marc Winters has at last found a refuge from unwanted attention. The wildlife ranger of a small, unremarkable island, he's quietly helping to preserve what survives of nature in a world wracked by climate change and chaotic weather, and trying his best to put his past behind him.
But then his narrowboat is burgled, the counterterrorism police come calling, and everything he thought he knew about the cult and his sister's fate is turned upside down. A cabal of so-called deep dreamers has revived the cult's crazy belief that the world could be healed by collective dreams fuelled by psychotropic mushrooms. They appear to think that Winters possesses information crucial to their success, and when he tries to discover more about them, he becomes inextricably entangled in plans that challenge his very existence.
Blending noir-inflected conspiracies and double-crosses, fantasies of dream science, and elegiac evocations of a depleted world, Loss Protocol's chimerical story keeps its secrets until the last page.
Critics Review
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Paul McAuley's mastery of prose has created a future world of eerie believability. Loss Protocol is a beautiful story of intrigue and mystery featuring characters that resonate with all of us
Peter F. Hamilton, author of EXODUS: THE ARCHIMEDES ENGINE
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Loss Protocol is Paul McAuley on absolute top form - a vision of near future England with a gripping thriller/mystery and profound thoughts about our dreams of landscape and possibility
Kim Newman, author of MODEL ACTRESS WHATEVER
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So far this is the best novel I've read this year. Deceptively straightforward in its telling, and in the understated but expert delineation of its climate-change future, it slowly, surely builds a superb waking-dreaming narrative of the magnificent strangeness of existence
Adam Roberts, author of LAKE OF DARKNESS
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Thrillingly paced, packed with big ideas and deeply, profoundly humane, Loss Protocol is McAuley at his dazzling best
James Bradley, author of LANDFALL
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Astonishing, in the quiet way only McAuley manages. A deep dive, through loss of species, places, and cultural coherence into deep myth, and the reclaiming of the public, the personal, and the deeply private
Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of ARCTIC SUN
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No one writes more authentic and engaging climate fictions than Paul McAuley - scientifically sharp, wondrously magical and intensely human all at the same time. Set in a vividly realized near future that is also a brilliantly depicted window into deep time, Loss Protocol raises the bar with the story of a world in the process of slowly rewilding, and people not far from us finding the path to renewal
Christopher Brown, author of TROPIC OF KANSAS and A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS
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Loss Protocol is Paul McAuley at his very best. It sits in a superposition of science fiction, pastoral and fantasy, blending a compelling plot, a world both reduced and resilient and a meditation on loss, grief and restitution
Oliver Morton, author of THE PLANET REMADE
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Beautifully written, blending close attention to the natural world with hallucinogenic dreams and a mind-boggling premise, this is an eco-thriller like no other from one of Britain's best SF writers
The Guardian
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Surely some of the best speculative nature writing - which is to say nature writing about an ecosystem that does not exist - yet published
Locus
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As with McAuley's Austral, there's a sense of a writer engaging with the climate crisis in a way that perhaps only Kim Stanley Robinson has equalled in recent years
SFX
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McAuley shows us the world to come through nature writing so intense and evocative . . . carefully written and thoughtful, this book manages to be encouraging
Strange Horizons
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Paul McAuley
- Narrator
- Matt Addis
- Duration
- 12 hours 18 minutes
- Release Date
- 12 February 2026
- ISBN
- 9781399635622
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Orion
- Genre
- Science fiction, Dystopian and utopian fiction
Synopsis
'A beautiful story of intrigue and mystery' PETER F. HAMILTON'Loss Protocol is Paul McAuley on top form' KIM NEWMAN'An eco-thriller like no other from one of Britain's best SF writers' THE GUARDIAN'Which one feels realer, truer. The world we lived in most of our lives, or the world we dreamed up?'Eight years after the catastrophic downfall of the cult his sister Izzy had joined, Marc Winters has at last found a refuge from unwanted attention. The wildlife ranger of a small, unremarkable island, he's quietly helping to preserve what survives of nature in a world wracked by climate change and chaotic weather, and trying his best to put his past behind him.But then his narrowboat is burgled, the counterterrorism police come calling, and everything he thought he knew about the cult and his sister's fate is turned upside down. A cabal of so-called deep dreamers has revived the cult's crazy belief that the world could be healed by collective dreams fuelled by psychotropic mushrooms. They appear to think that Winters possesses information crucial to their success, and when he tries to discover more about them, he becomes inextricably entangled in plans that challenge his very existence.Blending noir-inflected conspiracies and double-crosses, fantasies of dream science, and elegiac evocations of a depleted world, Loss Protocol's chimerical story keeps its secrets until the last page.
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