Limes inferior (Latin for lower limit) is a social science fiction dystopian novel written in 1982 by the Polish author Janusz A. Zajdel.

Limes inferior, one of Zajdel's best-known works, is a dystopia showing a grim vision of a future society resulting from a merger of the two systems competing at the time - communism and capitalism.

In addition to lifters a whole gallery of black market figures is presented - there are downers (who use their low IQ to provide realistic 'stupid' answers for those who want to keep their class artificially low like Sneer), chameleons (black market point dealers), key-makers (providing all sorts of illegal, special purpose Keys).

Meanwhile, his "lifter" friend Karl Pron tests a new counterfeited Key, which gives the owner an unlimited number of yellow points.

When Sneer obtains the super Key, he is taken to the meeting with top officials of the local government, where he learns that the social system of 'Argoland' is, in fact, an experiment imposed upon the humanity by the Aliens.

The 'over-zeroes' form a ruling class, which suppresses dissent fearful of the Aliens but permits all kinds of irregularities which they see as preserving the human nature of people.

The end is largely mystical, but it suggests that, with the help of Alice, Sneer succeeds in saving humanity, though it is not clear exactly how he achieves that.

As with much utopian and dystopian fiction in the former Soviet bloc countries, where open criticism of the government was dangerous and subject to censorship, this book was interpreted by many as in fact a criticism of the system disguised as an SF novel to evade censorship (the "aliens", who are military superpower and are simultaneously enforcing a social system invented by them and thought by them to be the best one for the entire universe, actually look strongly, from such a description made in the book, like the Soviets themselves).

Some argue that many of the author's visions - for example possibility of totalitarian control on a large scale through digital systems without tracking any single individual in particular - can be seen as existing in the current world.

Many aspects of the 'Argoland' society, seemingly fictional to the book's Western readers, represented an everyday situation in communist countries.

For example, in the shortage economy, luxury goods were available from a state-run chain of shops (like Pewex) selling products only for hard-to-obtain foreign currency.