Not familiar with EM Forster, but read books by all the rest and thoroughly enjoyed them. One of the first I ever read, at about 12 years old, in the genre was by Isaac Asimov and that got me hooked.
On the subject of real stars in Science Fiction the one that always sticks in my mind is Wolf 359, 3rd closest star to our sun at 7.3 Ly and the fictional site of Starfleets battle with the Borg.