“Troubles began quietly”

Political and aesthetic concerns are closely intertwined in E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909), in which easy interpretation is often cleverly forestalled. To move beyond such impasses, this chapter positions the story as a surprisingly radical intervention pre-First World War crises in European politics and political thought. The literary text is able to advocate for what cannot be openly discussed in public political debate without breaking deeply entrenched social mores. To make this case, the chapter opens with a contextual analysis of both literary periodisation and fin-de-siècle social anxieties of racial degeneration, before turning to queer theory and the work of Forster’s contemporary Edward Carpenter. Forster’s story can be read as a significant intervention in international political debates of its day by pointing to similarities between two epoch-defining scandals, namely the Dreyfus Affair in France and the Eulenberg Scandal in Germany. I argue that Forster condemns the treatment of both affairs by their respective national Establishments, and posits a queer futurity which counters the hegemonic model of masculinity of the pre-First World War era.