It is a seminal work in the British New Wave of experimental science fiction that began appearing in New Worlds following the appointment of Michael Moorcock as editor in 1964.

The bulk of the novel is the titular report, which describes in objective, repetitive and seemingly trivial detail the bizarre activity, taking place one overcast January day, apparently in England, around a suburban house in which a writer, Mr. Mary, lives with his wife.

Each also visits a café across the road which never has any other customers, and they eat poached haddock or drink coffee (though no one pays) and engage in stilted conversations with the proprietor Mr. Watt about a strike at a local factory.

A motif added by Aldiss in the Faber edition of the novel is The Hireling Shepherd, a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt which is thought to have multiple interpretations and possibly a hidden meaning.

There are copies of the painting in the outbuildings occupied by G, S and C, and it also exists in Domoladossa's world, where it is attributed to a "Russian-born German of British extraction" named Winkel Henri Hunt.

A detail from the painting is reproduced in black and white on the dust jacket of the Faber edition, and superimposed on the reproduction is a picture of a book with the words LOW POINT X on its cover in pink block capitals.

The book is thought to indicate the mental state of the girl in the painting, but the Virgin's recital becomes confused and the jury cannot decide whether the worlds she is describing are real or imaginary.

However, there is also a world in which both versions of the painting exist – in Manchester Art Gallery and on Faber's dust jacket – and readers of the novel who are, in effect, 'watching the watchers' may be left with the feeling that perhaps they too are being watched in other parallel universes.

Paul Di Filippo characterized it as "an infinite regress of cosmic voyeurs [that] seems to center around an enigmatic painting, as the French nouveau roman movement invades science fiction".

"[7] James Nicoll has said that to call it a 'novel' might raise inappropriate expectations", and suggests instead "novel-length narrative", finding it to be "a literary experiment in recursion and rejection of conventional plot" - one whose "characters are not especially compelling.