Last year I returned to reading the works of one of the most famous Polish science fiction writers. The previous two books I read recently were aimed at young people and were simple but interesting adventure novels. Zajdel is known primarily as a writer of sociological science fiction, and Limes Inferior belongs to this genre.
The world presented in the book is a popular motive in the author’s books. It is a picture of the future where society lives in conditions of very limited democracy or totalitarianism. People are subordinated to a system that assigns them to a group marked with numbers from 0 to 6. The assignment of the number depends on intelligence and “social usefulness” as it is defined in the book. In this way, people are limited to performing certain types of work or a certain amount of earnings for a given group. The imposed system causes some people to engage in illegal activities that the main character engages in - “lifting”, i.e. helping to assign a given person to a higher category.
The plot is not very dynamic. The author spends a lot of time explaining the rules of Argoland (the city where the action takes place) in the words of the characters in the novel. For me, this is a great advantage of Zajdel’s novel. In his book, he presents worlds where, despite the automation of many areas of life, people have very limited opportunities for personal development. People are deliberately dumbed down so that they do not feel the need to strive for change.
The world presented in the book is an obvious commentary on the reality in which the author himself lived. Poland in the years 1945-1989 was a communist regime, where any opposition to the only party in power was severely punished and everyday life was gray and not very promising.
A very good book presenting a possible, dystopian scenario in the distant future.