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Loss Protocol

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Loss Protocol

By: Paul McAuley
Narrated by: Matt Addis
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About this listen

 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©2026 Paul McAuley (P)2026 Orion Publishing Group Limited Science Fiction Winter

Critic Reviews

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
Thrillingly paced, packed with big ideas and deeply, profoundly humane, Loss Protocol is McAuley at his dazzling best
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
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
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