Marshall T. Savage

Marshall Savage, circa 2015

Marshall Thomas Savage (born 6 August 1955) is a building contractor, small businessman, energy innovator and futurist from Rifle, Colorado. He currently lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Early life

The Savage family is very active in the development of natural gas, real estate, water, timber, and wind power.

See main article: Savage Family of Rifle, Colorado

Savage was born in Grand Valley, Colorado [1], on 6 August 1955, to John Savage Sr. and Joan Leonhardt, the third of four sons.

In 1963, John and Joan Savage moved their family of four sons to Graham Mesa in Rifle, Colorado.

Marshall attended Rifle High [2], likely from 1969 to about 1973.

He attended four semesters at Swarthmore College: Fall 1974, Spring 1975, Fall 1978, and Fall 1979. [3]

Savage, April 1978, working for the California Museum of Science and Industry

Taking a break from his studies, on 20 April 1978, he was featured in the Yuma Daily Sun while working for the California Museum of Science and Industry's travelling team. His team visited elementary schools, in this case San Pasqual School of Yuma, Arizona. The exhibits gave students "firsthand experiences with recent events in the fields of mathematics, the human body, electricity, minerals, science, space exploration, and energy."

After his experience with the California Museum of Science and Industry, he attended the University of Southern California (USC), taking a variety of classes, including film studies, [4], ultimately completing his English degree there and graduating in 1981. [5].

After graduating from USC he founded an entity called "West Anvil Water & Power Company". He established it with family members to develop the Webster Hill reservoir and hydropower project on the Colorado River. In 1982 this entity applied for a permit to build a dam on this river, submitting an environmental assessment and resource management plan for Glenwood Springs Resource Area, but the application was ultimately rejected by the relevant regulatory agencies. It was during this time, circa 1982, that Savage began to write what would become The Millennial Project, in his spare time.

Marshall Savage, 3 March 1987, at Quality Times Audio Bookstore, Denver

Circa 1987, with his brother he founded a pioneering audiobook store called Quality Times Audio Bookstore, in Denver, Colorado.

"As children we were carefully taught how to read," he said in an interview on 1 April 1987 with the Denver Post. "But not many people have been taught listening skills. One thing audio books are very good at is reawakening that latent ability to understand and follow the spoken word."

More important than the difference between reading and listening, Savage said, is the difference between watching a story on television and listening to a storyteller.

"The fundamental difference between theater of the eye and theater of the mind is that when you watch TV, everything is presynthesized for you. Theater of the mind is so much more powerful by comparison. Look at what happened in 1938 when Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' was aired over national radio. The whole country went berserk. Get a message orally, and your mind fills in the details. Believe me, George Lucas cannot provide the props and special effects that my imagination produces spontaneously."

Marriage and family

By 1995 he was married to Tami Savage and had likely adopted her two children, by a previous marriage to a man called Mr. Eichman.

• Jeffrey Michael "Jeff" Eichman (born 1983)
• Matthew "Matt" Eichman (born 1986) [6], a chef. Currently Executive Director of the Savage Catering Group in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.

He had two children by Tami:

• Dyson A. Savage (named after futurist Freeman Dyson [7]), born circa December 1995. [8] On 13 May 2018 he graduated from the University of Idaho with a double major in Economics and Finance.
• Mackensie Savage [9] [10]. As of 24 December 2016 she works at Shopko Coeur d'Alene [11].

The Millennial Project

Marshall T. Savage, from the inside jacket of TMP, circa 1992

From December 1992 to November 1997, he was an active member of the tech futurist community, especially after the publication in 1992 of his 512-page magnum opus, The Millennial Project (TMP).

TMP discusses an expansive vision of the future for humanity, a utopian vision where men live among the stars in space colonies.

In this boldly optimistic manifesto, Savage proclaims a master plan for the human race: to spread life throughout the galaxy. To many, space exploration seems irrelevant to Earth's real problems; but humanity may in fact have no other way to secure its long-term survival. To remain confined to Earth, Savage claims, is to court extinction, possibly within a few decades. Savage (an engineer who has established the Millennial Foundation to promote space exploration) outlines his program for transferring a significant portion of humanity off-planet. The crucial first step is to colonize the ocean surface with floating cities, quadrupling the living space available to the growing population of Earth. This allows us to reverse the degradation of the environment by shifting to the thermal energy of the deep ocean as our primary power source. At the same time, spirulina algae (already on sale in health food stores) becomes a major new food crop. The hardware for these oceanic colonies is already within practical reach: Savage provides a detailed inventory of how his floating cities would work and support themselves, with copious citations of the scientific literature. Once this move is well underway, it frees up energy and resources for the next steps. Improved space vehicles make possible orbiting space colonies, then settlements on the moon. A larger step is terraforming Mars--creating an atmosphere and a water supply for our lifeless neighbor to form a human habitat. On an even longer time scale, the race can expand into the rest of the solar system: asteroids and the moons of other planets. Ultimately, artificial habitats may completely surround the sun. With the resources of an entire solar system at our command, according to Savage, humanity can at last send out emissaries to other stars. The stuff of science fiction? Of course--but rigorously built from existing science, carefully documented, and convincingly argued. Highly recommended.

— Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 1994 Issue [12]

He wrote TMP and self-published it by founding a publishing house, calling it "Empyrean Publishing" ("empyrean" meaning "belonging to or deriving from heaven"), entirely for the purpose of self-publishing TMP. Empyrean Publishing was billed as being based in Denver, Colorado, and only ever published the first edition of TMP and never published anything else. It was managed together with the Savage family's other businesses.

Savage forwarded a copy of his self-published book to famed author Arthur C. Clark, who was interested enough to agree to write the forward for the second edition. Clarke finished writing the forward in his home of Colombo on 7 May 1993. Perhaps this is what convinced a real publishing house to take up the book.

On 1 August 1994, it was re-printed by famed publishing house Little, Brown & Company. This reprint included a forward by Arthur C. Clarke, one of the leading science fiction writers of the era and President of the National University of Sri Lanka, praising TMP for Savage's "command of a dozen engineering disciplines and his amazing knowledge of scientific and technical literature."

In the late 1980s [sic] futurist author Marshall Savage published what is perhaps the most comprehensive space development and colonization plan ever proposed. Dubbed The Millennial Project (or TMP for short) and detailed in a book of the same name, this millennium-spanning plan set out in colorful detail every major step of human civilization's progression into space, from the cultivation of a new space-focused society and the establishment of a terrestrial renewable energy and industrial infrastructure to drive the initial expansion into space all the way through to the creation of a vast Solar Civilization based predominately on orbital settlements with a collective population of trillions and culminating in the first missions to colonize neighboring stars.

— Eric Hunting, circa 2009 [13]

TMP Step 7: Solaria. Art by Keith Spangle

The book features inspiring, dreamlike art by artist Keith Spangle. [14] He worked closely with Savage to ensure the artwork hewed closely to Savage's vision:

My involvement and Marshal's depended on the specific illustration. On many of them, Marshall would give me a general idea of what he wanted, then let me do the rest. If I had what I thought was a really cool idea, I would do a fairly detailed color sketch and show it to him. Other times, Marshall had a very specific idea in mind and closely watched and corrected what I was doing. On many of the color illustrations what he wanted was something that would illustrate the idea rather than what the actual thing would look like: the illustration of the endlessly repeated golden spheres is a case in point. It was meant to illustrate the IDEA of a space based society rather than what such a society would actually look like (you probably would not be able to see your closest neighbor). Doing these illustrations was slow and a lot of work, since this was pre-digital. I suspect that with a team of digital artists, Marshall could have produced the book in half the time, and probably would have gotten even better results.

— Keith Spangle, 2017. Private correspondence with Michael Currie.

This book was highly influential on the thinking of a generation of young scientists and visionairies, including entrepreneur Michael Currie and others.

The copyright on the book is controlled by the author, Marshall Savage, and his publisher, Little, Brown, and Company, which is now owned by Hachette Book Group. [15]. The film rights were sold (or possibly optioned) to Columbia Pictures in 2000. Columbia Pictures is now ultimately owned by Sony Corporation. It's possible this film rights option has since expired.

The First Millennial Foundation

See main article: The First Millennial Foundation.

The cover to the 1994 edition of TMP states FMF was founded by Marshall in 1987, although formally, the articles for incorporation were signed by Marshall on 2 December 1992. Savage founded this Colorado-based organization as being dedicated to promoting the colonization of space. The basic building blocks that he lays out for this grand mission -- extraordinary transport systems, self-sustaining space cities and terraformed planets -- are not fully his own visions, but he explains them in detail in the TMP book.

By January 1995, Savage had an assistant, Theresa Hamilton [16], and TMP had 700 people on their mailing list and 150 memberships, according to correspondence with future Red Hat Senior Patent Counsel David Perry, then a sophomore student at Whitemore College [17] [18]

In November 1997 Savage was disillusioned by the progress that had been made.

After five years of pounding my head against an intransigent public it has begun to dawn on me that the world at large is not ready to embrace First Foundation's message of mankind's rendezvous with stellar destiny, at least not yet. That is somewhat discouraging, but despite this I am more optimistic now that we will ultimately achieve our ends than at any time hitherto. The reason for this is a growing conviction on my part that the human race is riding a rocket that will ultimately carry all of us to the stars. This rocket is not yet evident in the literal sense, but figuratively I think it analogizes present history accurately.

— Marshall T. Savage, Convergence with Destiny, Distant Star, Volume 5 of 13, November 1997

See main article: Convergence with Destiny.

In late 1997, Savage stopped actively working for the organization, and also in late 1997 FMF was renamed the Living Universe Foundation (LUF). [19] Savage by late 2000 had stopped interacting with the organization in any meaningful way. By late 2000 he was only indirectly communicating with the organization he founded; he did maintain friendly relations with Phil Kopitske.

For about ten years, Eric Hunting made intellectual contributions to the LUF in the form of a "TMP2" wiki-driven successor to the original book:

Though starting with a promising and rapidly growing community, the FMF ran into critical trouble when Marshal Savage abandoned his own brainchild and his career as a futurist around the turn of the century, supposedly because of interpersonal conflicts with some of the 'core' members of the original FMF. This was followed by a rift in the community between supporters of the original scheme and a more Libertarian influenced faction that sought to abandon the marine phase of development as a distraction in the belief that we were entering a new commercial space race with the advent of the Lockheed VentureStar --a notion that proved very premature. I spent about a decade seeking to revive the organization, eventually becoming president by default and cultivating the wiki project TMP2 [20] in an attempt to update TMP to more contemporary technology and futurist thought, create a Sourceforge-like project development forum, and seek the creation of new futurist media. However, for some ten years, I was the only person who ever contributed significantly to the project.

— Eric Hunting, private email correspondence, 2017

Hunting goes on to reflect on how TMP typified several trends: the rise of the Internet as a force for social organization, and the fading of the space-advocacy community as a serious driver of technological development.

Marshal Savage was originally a strong believer in the potential of the Internet as a catalyst for global social action. But the space advocacy movement was already in a decline at the time the FMF was founded, the original founders of the movement retreating into the formal space establishment and relegating the movement to a non-participatory role, a haven for establishment outcasts like Robert Zubrin, and a growing infiltration by purveyors of New Age and SciFi inspired psuedo-science, conspiracy theory, and radical Libertarianism. Instead of catalyzing action, the Internet created increasingly sheltered echo-chambers that cultivated increasing cladification of the movement into ever smaller, more ineffectual, groups pursuing their own pet 'magic bullets' for space's challenges. People with actual science and engineering backgrounds were progressively driven off until little more than a bunch of SciFi fans remained.

— Eric Hunting, private email correspondence, 2017

Eric was interviewed 8 May 2011 by David M. Livingston for his show, "The Space Show" [21] [22]

As of July 2018, the Facebook page for LUF has 1,114 "likes".

Savage withdrew from the futurist community from 1999 to 2001. His last contribution appears to be a short article for Wired Magazine, on 1 July 2001, entitled "The Moon Base Race" [23]

Since that date he has given no interview nor made any contribution to the futurist community.

Post-FMF

Although he was influenced by and communicated with the field's greatest luminaries: Gerard O'Neill, Freeman Dyson, and Arthur C. Clarke, Savage tended to work alone and thus did not direct his foundation to participate the Space Studies Institute conferences that were running contemporaneously with his foundation.

Like the Gerard O'Neill, he was inundated with interest in his space colony concepts. [24] [25]

In about 1998, he moved with his family to Idaho, to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, [26], population 50,000, close to the Canadian border.

Today, he lives in a suburb of Coeur d'Alene, called Hayden. [27]

As of 2018 he is listed as Vice President, Technology Development at Independent Energy Partners (IEPM) [28].

On their website his biography states:

Marshall Savage was born with a visionary and innovative mind that he applies across broad entrepreneurial experience in a variety of fields including energy development. He is the inventor of Geothermic Fuel Cells and is responsible for primary technology development. This includes ongoing patent applications, design refinement, and prototype development. Mr. Savage was the founder and President of West Anvil Water & Power Company, which was established to develop the Webster Hill reservoir and hydropower project on the Colorado River. Mr. Savage joined a co-venture with the Shale Energy Corporation of America to develop an oil shale project on lands owned by the Savage family. The Savage family is very active in the development of natural gas, real estate, water, timber, and wind power. Mr. Savage continues to participate in all of these activities on a limited basis.

— Independent Energy Partners

Since the oil price decline in late 2014, the geothermic fuel cell project was shut down, and he is retired from working at IEPM.

References in media

In 1996, he was featured in Future Fantastic, a BBC show narrated by Gillian Anderson. [29] [30]:

COLORADO: "Strange and desolate" terrain near Rifle serves as the back-drop for a British Broadcasting Corp. television series on the possibilities of colonizing other planets. "The crew wanted me in this sort of Martian landscape," said writer Marshall Savage. The Rifle-based space thinker, author of "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy In Eight Easy Steps," was interviewed for the BBC series "Future Fantastic." It will be shown in the United States on the Learning Channel as one of five 60-minute programs [that] will concern a different aspect of the future of humanity.

— Colorado Gazette-Telegraph, page B12, 1 June 1996

In 1999, Savage was one of three visionaries discussed in the documentary, "Space Colonies: Living Among the Stars", produced by David Hickman [31] for the Discovery Channel. It was later packaged as part 54 of The Discovery Channel's "The Cosmos: The Ultimate Space Collection".

Producer David Hickman [32] is now as of 2018 Senior Lecturer in Film & Television Production, University of York.

See main article: Reviews of The Millennial Project

Sources

The Millennial Project: Colonising the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps Author - Marshall T. Savage ISBN - 0 316 77163 5 Publisher - Little, Brown & Co Price - £11.99 Pages - 508

"Go Up, Young Man," by Marcia Bartusiak. Washington Post, 8 January 1995. [33]

Docuwiki [34]

The Millennial Project Revisited: a Book Review, by Jeff Fullerton. The Libertarian Enterprise, Number 822, 17 May 2015. [35]

TMP2, by Eric Hunting [36]

LUF Facebook Page [37]