Loss Protocol

by Paul McAuley

Marc Winters' sister Issy died 8 years ago, during the catastrophic end of the cult she belonged to. They believed that they could hold back the increasing impact of climate change by dreaming a new world into existence, fuelled by psychotropic mushrooms. But the dream ended in disaster.

Winters has kept his head down since then. He had his own connection to the cult, and was viewed with suspicion by his friends, family and the authorities. Now he lives a quiet, anonymous life as the wildlife ranger looking after a small island in the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, attempting to revive the biodiversity of his small patch of ground. Too many species have gone extinct, or are on the brink of disappearing, but he and his colleagues are doing what they can, while they can.

But then an unexpected visitor to the island needs to be rescued from drowning, Winters' narrowboat is burgled and graffitied, and the police come calling again. Something unexpected is happening, and perhaps the dreamers' cult is not as finished as everyone thought. Across the familiar but impossibly changed landscapes of England after decades of climate catastrophe, Winters must investigate these strange events, and discover the true fate of his beloved sister.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

Hardcover

First published February 12, 2026

About the author

Since about 2000, book jackets have given his name as just Paul McAuley.

A biologist by training, UK science fiction author McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction, dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel.

McAuley has also used biotechnology and nanotechnology themes in near-future settings.

Since 2001, he has produced several SF-based techno-thrillers such as The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and White Devils.

Four Hundred Billion Stars, his first novel, won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988. Fairyland won the 1996 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1997 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Noirish, Conspiracy, set in a Gaia's Lamenting future Britain involving a Dream Land Reality Warper.


The Green Man:, a folkloric British nature spirit.

My dead-tree hardback was 367 pages long. The book had a 2026 UK copyright.

Paul J. McAuley is a British author of science fiction. Many of his stories have a biological theme. He has published almost 30 novels, standalone and in several series. I’ve read most of the author’s books. The last book being War of the Maps (my review).

"It's the hope that kills you" -- "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1934) by Rudolf Besier

TL;DR Synopsis

I approached this book with great excitement. McAuley is a fave author. I was disappointed.

Marc Winters, working as an ecological ranger to preserve what's left of a future Britain's riverine ecology, being strangled by climate change, wakes up one day to find a remnant faction of the cult that killed his sister eight years ago has taken a serious interest in him.

This story was too much of an intellectual fantasy and not enough of a noirish conspiracy set in a future Britain changed by environmental disasters. It’s a story of Weltschmerz (worldgrief) as well as the protagonist’s personal grief. It explores themes of resilience, adaptation, and the repercussions of inaction on climate change in a maybe-habitable dystopian future. It also explores what happens when you yank someone out of, who has finally reached the final stage of grieving (Acceptance), and offer them hope through a seemingly crazy belief in the manipulation of reality through dreams induced by genetically engineered psychotropic mushrooms.

This was a more intellectual and introspective fantasy novel than I expected. Its well written, but a tad aimless.

The Review

I snatched up a hardback copy of this book, on a whirlwind book crawl through Waterstones in Picadilly, the day before being scrunched into an aerial, BA, steerage seat to the States. With it in my checked luggage, I felt I’d scored a coup on my Stateside sci-fi reading pals. This is despite most of them now eschewing the written word for ear-reading. I’ve been reading McAuley for decades. Although his most recent work has not scratched my escapist itch as well as his earlier science fiction. I also read his blog . I should have taken heed when he wrote, about this book, “A fantasy novel about the perils of misusing fantasies.”

McAuley is a proficient author. All his prose is always top-notch. Dialog was about equal with descriptive prose. In this story, he breaks with the modern faddishness of multiple POVs and goes with the antique single-protagonist POV. It was reasonably well done. Winters flashes back to when his sister was alive a few times. I just wanted to say that too is well done. I scrupulously inspect the prose of what I read. I found one error involving tense. Finally, this being a first printing sourced in the UK, the story’s prose has not been Americanized. The overt British-isms of the narrative enriched the story, though I noted the lack of future slang in the dialogue, which is really hard to pull off.

Characters were good, although they hewed closely to tropes. The protagonist was Marc Winters. He’s an environmental ranger managing riverine ecosystems. He’s also near the end of managing the grief over the death of his sister. Winters is now a stable man, who, after his sister’s death, was adrift and a drifter for a while. He now has himself under control. Interestingly, he’s a Ridiculously Average Guy . However, between the loss of his sister and, earlier, his mother, Winters has been shaped more by loss later in life than anything else. Winter’s sister, Isobel (“Izzy”) is the McGuffin. Previously, she had joined a tree-hugging, eco-commune focused on living in community with nature. The commune was hijacked by a charismatic charlatan with outlandish beliefs about the power of genetically modified shrooms. The commune became an infamous cult. Izzy was a principal in the cult. Eight years ago, there was a standoff with authorities; all that was left of the cult was a crater in Northumbria. Izzy's body or DNA was not recovered from the crater.

Given this is a noirish conspiracy, multiple antagonists shouldn’t be a surprise. Some of them need to be left for the reader’s surprise. However, the obvious antagonists are the authoritarian state, Kasey Motte, and the Deep Dreamers. Britain, due to the ongoing ecocatastrophe, is a version of People's Republic of Tyranny , a national panopticon is in operation, and there is a Counterterrorism section throwing its weight around. Motte was an infamous cult leader who believed that reality could be altered through a consensual group dream initiated through potent psychotropic mushrooms. Healing the Earth and Green Man lore were part of that long, strange trip. Motte and his cult, which included Izzy came to a vaguely Jonestown ending in a siege with law enforcement near the Scottish (an independent country) border. The Deep Dreamers were a sect of Mott’s cult that believed in the power of his dreams, although with less altruistic goals.

In addition, there was a cast of tens of supporting characters. There were: policemen, drifters, PIs, politicians, ecologists, thugs, drug dealers, shroom addicted cultists, pensioners, small holders, eco-apparatchiks, black marketeers, and climate refugees. McAuley’s characters’ vocations were remarkably egalitarian in that women were interchangeable with men in any role. There was also a non-binary character that did Deus Ex Machina duty.

There was no sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll in the story. Nobody had sex, despite Winters being heterosexual and having had girlfriends in the past. Illegal psychotropic mushrooms were a plot element. Marijuana was legal in Britain. Winters preferred it for taking the edge off over alcohol. Alcohol consumption was moderate and without drunkenness, with craft beer preferred, but also wine and distillates were available. Folks consumed entertainment. There was live music performed and references to recorded golden oldies.

There was violence. Violence was: physical, drug-related, and non-lethal weapons. Drug-facilitated crime occurred several times. Violence was not graphic. Body count during the main part of Winter’s narrative was two.

Plotting was well within the scope of noir fiction. Eight years after his sister’s death, Winters, who thought all was over, becomes the focus of the Deep Dreamers' efforts to promote their practices. A conspiracy thriller ensues. The first two-thirds of the story are very engaging. I was swallowed by McAuley’s worldbuilding, and by Winters going about his life as an environmental ranger in a Britain a few decades in the future, on a planet that was dying by inches despite some folks' best efforts to keep it alive. It was very realistic. Despite the solid world-building and biological science, the story wasn't gritty enough to be a real page-turner. There was no really dark stuff happening, as I would expect from an apocalypse-in-progress. After about 250 pages, I began to wonder, then worry, about where the story was going. (An advantage of Eye-reading to Ear-reading is seeing how much of the book is left to go.) The last third was a headlong flight into fantasy, and then The End. The various pieces of the story fell into place too quickly. It's left to the reader to determine if the Britannic fantasy invoked by shrooms and deep dreaming can change reality.

Locations for the story included Essex, in particular the Blackwater Estuary in Essex , Northumbria, and metro-London. Only being familiar with London, I'd venture to say it hadn't changed much. Which is odd, because I visit only sporadically, I note late changes over the decades. For example, I miss the red phone boxes.

World-building was the story's strong suit. I spent a lot of time thinking about the planet’s slow decline. As expected from the botanist-by-trade author, the biological sciences are also good. As an aside, the titular “Loss Protocol” is the ceremony performed by the ecological rangers when another biological species on their patch is confirmed to be extinct. The tech in use was not a far cry from what’s available now. I would have expected larger changes. If anything, the use of AI was minimal. The societal world-building was OK, but I found it strikingly well-mannered. For example, everyone seemed well-fed enough, the black marketeers were too affable, and nobody was selling in-person sex.

Summary

Firstly, McAuley is a fave author. His The Quiet War and its series is a personal favorite. In general, I found this to be a stab at a fantasy book with solid science, but a too tame work of noir conspiracy fiction.

This was a technically well-written book, but it just wasn’t a good story. I frankly found Winter’s Britain to be fine Edutainment, the depth of the conspiracies to be shallow, and I’m just too disinterested in fantasy fiction. The story was also felt YA-ish to me. On the edge of the apocalypse, I’d have expected people and society to be fraying more than they obviously were. McAuley power-washed all of the Hobbesian solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short out of the dystopia. Although Winters was not solitary. He had lots of friends and antagonists to help him along.

So, good world-building, squeaky-clean story, and poor pacing in the story, along with disinterest on my part in the fantastical. I'll remind GR readers that two (2) stars is "It's OK."

YMMV

[Peter Tillman]

Rave review by by Niall Harrison at Locus: https://locusmag.com/review/loss-prot...
Excerpt:
"It is a gnarly, ornery piece of work, one that I sense has not given up all of its secrets on a first read, but here is my preliminary conclusion: I think the absolute solidity of its initial realism is a kind of trap, an attempt to make you forget that you are reading a dream. But a dream it is, for Winters, for his author, and now for me, too."

I'm a McAuley fan. TBR!

[Runalong · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very strong lyrical first half falls into more mechanical cults and kidnappings which for me meant the story felt a bit clunky and don’t really hit the subjects it was aiming for - worth a read but I suspect will not fully linger in my mind

Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...

[Ian Mond]

Loss Protocol is my ninth McAuley.* I came to him late, but since galloping through “The Quiet War” series—a monumental achievement that hasn’t received the recognition it muchly deserves**—I now read everything he writes. I loved Austral. I loved Beyond The Burn Line. I, for some reason, didn’t read War of the Maps,*** but I’m sure I’ll love it when I do, eventually, pick it up.

I didn’t love Loss Protocol.

It’s not a bad book. It’s very readable, and there are moments that are both beautiful and moving. But it doesn’t have the dynamism I’ve come to expect from McAuley. It’s a thriller where the thriller-y bits are a bit by the numbers, and where the plot is burdened by a conceit that, due to its very nature, and without giving it away, can’t be actualised without breaking the novel. It’s akin to one of my least favourite tropes: the ancient evil that can’t be awoken or everyone will die, AKA “Evil Sealed in a Can”.****

The novel follows Marc Winters, a wildlife ranger for the UK Biodiversity Agency, who is stationed on the fictional island of Cynsea (I had to check), located in the estuaries of northern England. Marc’s involved in rewilding efforts that echo those in E.J. Swift’s magnificent When There Were Wolves, and some of the best writing in the novel happens in those early pages, where Marc describes his marshy, fecund environment. We learn that Marc chose this job not because he’s an ardent environmentalist, but to isolate himself from the events that surrounded the death of his sister, Izzy. She was part of a commune/cult led by Kasey Motte that raided a fuel facility, took hostages, stole explosives, and ultimately blew themselves up. The thriller stuff kicks in when (a) it appears his sister is still alive and (b) believers in Kasey Motte’s fringe views start hunting Winters down, believing he holds information they need.

And it’s with (b) that the “Evil Sealed in a Can” kicks in. To be clear, we’re not talking about an actual slumbering, Cthulhu-like evil entity, but something that has the same effect. In short, something that cannot happen, or at least can’t happen until the very end, or the novel comes to an abrupt conclusion.*****

None of this is helped by the fact that Marc Winters is a bland character. Not passive. Just unremarkable. Initially, I thought Marc’s lack of character was a plot point, and, to a degree, it is. But he’s always the least interesting person in the room, and given how much time we spend in his head, I found parts of the novel, especially the middle, to be a slog.******

What saves Loss Protocol is the secondary cast. Especially S, the “slender androgynous kid” Winters rescues from a mudbank. S is awesome.

If you’re new to McAuley, don’t start here. Read Austral or the first Quiet War novel which, you’ll be shocked to learn, is called The Quiet War. If you’re a McAuley fan, there’s still much to enjoy in this novel. As Niall says in his excellent (and more positive review for Locus), “McAuley’s construction of Winters’s daily rou­tine and the landscape through which he moves is surely some of the best speculative nature writing – which is to say nature writing about an ecosystem that does not exist – yet published.”

Just temper your expectations.

*Which is just over a third of his output. The bloke’s been writing since the late 80s.

**Yes, yes, fuck awards. But the absence of McAuley from the Hugos and Nebulas (a) highlights the parochial nature of these awards (only reinforced by the fact that when the Hugos are held in a country other than America, we get a shortlist featuring writers from outside the US) and (b) the narrow tastes of US publishers (not readers), who have decided that books by authors like McAuley don’t sell. As such, American readers don’t see these novels on their bookshelves unless they frequent an independent and they’re willing to pay the extra dollars (a state of affairs that all Aussie readers are very familiar with). Given this state of affairs is unlikely to ever change, my complaining about it, which I have just done, is pointless.

***It came out during COVID. I read fuck all that year.

****Yes, the trope has a name! I love it!!!!

*****Although, and this is the thing, I think McAuley could have opened the can. It would have made for a very different novel… but still.

******I did give Marc a chance. He’s an innocent dragged into a situation not of his own making, who’s also not a man of action. That’s not to say he has no agency; he’s just not very competent at all the thriller stuff. But, other than the loss of his sister, I found very little about Marc to hang my Akubra on.

[Mark Schlack · Rating 4 out of 5]

McAuley fits neatly into what seems to be an emerging approach to writing about the climate crisis: eschewing heroic tech geniuses whose brilliance will save us, he focuses instead on the people trying to survive the ever changing social structure as it responds to the ever declining natural conditions.

The books main character, Marc Winters, is a ranger working on a coastal island doing rewilding. He's drawn into a controversy centered on his sister, who turns up alive eight years after an incident in which she was presumed killed. She was part of a cult that believe it could eat special hallucinogenic mushrooms and dream a better world into existence. The UK's semi-fascist state has been hunting her ever since, and Winters is eager to stay out of it.

But inevitably he's drawn into trying to find his sister and learn the truth. In the course, we get to consider the power and the limitations of our dreams to heal society and nature.

I haven't read any of his other works, but in this work McAuley joins what seems to be an emerging trend in climate fiction: not so much science fiction as magical realism. Can dreams really change the world? So much so that when we wake up from them, the world is already different? Or is that a dangerous illusion, an evasion of the real challenges and real work that people like our fictional Marc Winters must do?

In my own work, and in works like this, the answer seems to be yes and no. What we must dream are not technical solutions -- we already have many -- but a new world where social relations and technical methods align to take us in a new direction, away from compulsive consumption and mindless growth, toward a more balanced and sustainable system.

If I have any quarrel with Loss Protocol, it's the end. Feels a lot like a sequel is in the works. Fair play then, but I thought McAuley punted on what the whole experience of the book actually meant for both the main characters and the world they live in. I guess we'll have to read the next one to find out. And I will, because even with its flaws, I like the way McAuley is thinking and look forward to reading more of his thoughts.

[MH · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts fairly slow and gentle, with a lot of stuff about conservation work. And then of course Things Happen, and its cults and kidnappings. Its engaging enough, and I liked it, but its also nothing really special. The antagonists would however be great in a modern Cthulhu story.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

McAuley's sad and slightly desperate vision of a near-future climate-ravaged world is haunting and lingers in the mind.