Twenty generations ago, an Earthman named Langtry stumbled on a way to travel efficiently among the stars. He divided the secret among his five sons, each of whom settled on a different planet. The heirs of the five, known as the Sons of Langtry, now dominate the human universe. Generations of life on strange worlds have made them visibly distinct from each other and from Earthers, who are held in contempt on each of the Sons' five homeworlds.
PicaresqueIrish adventurer Paddy Blackthorn is caught attempting to steal a space drive, and is sentenced to death. In escaping from his sentence, Paddy accidentally kills the Sons of Langtry and takes from each a bracelet containing a clue to the location of one-fifth of the secret. With the help of a beautiful human secret agent, Fay Bursill, Paddy follows the clues on each of the five dominant worlds, in the hope that Earthfolk will be able to resume their rightful place in space.
Although one of Vance's earliest efforts, The Five Gold Bands exhibits many of the stylistic elements that would come to characterize many of his later works: a colorful protagonist who unintentionally achieves the greater good in a frantic and desperate attempt to save his own life (and fortune), numerous exotic locales populated by equally exotic sentient species, and the theme of a treasure hunt. It also introduces another frequent theme of Vance’s work – that the environment of an alien planet will change any human colonists within a few generations to the extent that they will scarcely be recognizable as human.
