Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World / Planet of Exile / City of Illusions (Hainish Cycle, #1-3)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

But while one needs an ansible to speak to the vanishing past, books are the technology we have to speak to the future, collapsing space and time into the simple honesty of an aging woman’s voice, telling the story of her earliest stories.