rana,
Here's a suggestion put forth for debate. Consolidation of the two groups seems only sensible, considering that we're not going to get a new book till 1999---at that time you might want to splinter again, especially as a second Short Sun book may follow hard on the heels of the first.
But what if, instead of starting new groups devoted to Simmons, C. Smith, etc., we became a kind of reading forum (if that doesn't sound too bourgeois)? We're a self-selected group, we're obviously working pretty well together, why don't we just throw it open for a while to a variety of literary topics? The people who think they're not interested in Smith or Simmons could either lurk for a while or get and read the books and pitch in. A single book could be considered. It seems to me, for instance, that most Wolfeans would get a thrill from A.S. Byatt's Possession and Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow, puzzle books with a strong sense of genre, but published in the mainstream.
-alga-