[1][2] Caroline (Caro) Soames-Watkins is a neurosurgeon who resigns her position at a Florida hospital after her accusation of sexual misconduct against a superior is dismissed and she becomes the target of a social media smear campaign.

She is contacted by her great uncle, Samuel Watkins, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, who offers her a job as a surgeon at a secret medical research facility in the Cayman Islands.

Julian tells her that they developed computer chips, that when implanted into the brains of volunteers, the subjects are able to observe and enter branches of the multiverse.

[3][4] For Observer, Lanza's agent suggested a collaboration with Kress, a science fiction author of over twenty novels, and winner of several awards.

"[5] When Kress heard that Lanza wanted to express his ideas of biocentrism in a novel, she was "intrigued", because she too had "always thought that consciousness is woven into the universe".

[7] Speculative fiction author Lisa Tuttle wrote in The Guardian that in Observer Lanza introduces his theory of biocentrism to a broader audience.

[2] She said that while she found the experiments in the novel "do not convince as proof of anything except that it is possible to change people’s minds", it is nonetheless "a compelling story filled with believable characters and interesting ideas.