This is quite a quiet newsgroup, as many seem to have migrated to egroups. The quietness of the group may in part be due to the nature of the books. The Clancy Newsgroup is more of a community which discusses real world affairs following on from topics in his books or, actual events.

Cussler tends to write novels that are pure fiction, sometimes with an ecological theme, but usually divorced from the real world, which tends to kill off any potential discussions. Unlike Clancy he doesn't frequent the newsgroup either.

A recent development has been a series of trivia questions, based on the book. These started off quite easy to start with, but just lately have been extremely difficult. If nothing else it gives you a good reason to dust off the books and read them again.

The group is occasionally prone to the odd spam attack, but this seems to be the way of life on the internet at present. Don't be put off because the low usage of the group means it is hardly noticeable.

Egroups

I got fed up with the group because it seemed to consist of a bunch of wallies, saying hi or me to. With Egroups you also get a lot of advertisements. I will however log back on to see what the situation is like now.

I have had a brief look, and much of what is going on is totally irrelevant to the works of Clive Cussler. Avoid like the plague!.

I recently (25/1/04) joined the group for a month to see whether the group was worth joining on a more regular basis. Unfortunately it is still the same rubbish being spouted, and I appeared to not be getting all of the groups postings. Very little of it seemed to be related to Cussler or his books. My comments from a previous review remain the same. Avoid.