Making Gravity In Science Fiction

This blog has highlighted on several occasions that I am a massive sci-fi nerd (if this is news to you, this is probably your first time reading here).  When science fiction writers or TV producers have a space ship generate (or simulate) gravity they achieve it in three major ways.  Spin the ship, in movies like Interstellar or 2001 a Space Odessey, the crew is provided with something akin to gravity by spinning part or all of the ship.  This rotation effectively pushes crew members outward and the ground pushing back feels something like gravity.  In the TV show The Expanse (which I highly recommend, the more people who watch it the more likely I'm going to get the 30+ seasons of the show that I desire (and now I jinxed it))(back to the expanse) in the show humans have created advanced engines that are so efficient that ships can be in almost constant acceleration, this means that so long as the ship is under thrust, crews will experience some degree of faux gravity.   Another alternative is the use of "mag boots" specially designed footwear or general attire that has the ability to be attracted to the surface of the ship when crew members need it to be, and when they move their foot up, the magnetic attraction is removed.  This solution is incredibly reasonable, unfortunately, no one seems to have made a show where people in "mag boots" mode actually looks like only their feet want to go down.  (this is not to say doing so is easy, just an observation that it would be cool to see a space battle where mag boots are in use and while a crew member is reloading they just let the empty magazines float there, or less dramatically, while fixing an engine crew members are surrounded by their tools floating nearby.)

The most popular option for ship,s gravitym hand wavium generators.  Hand Wavium Grav generators are popular in , Star Trek, Star Wars, Earth Above and Beyond, Farscape, Stargate...... read all of the shows.  What irks me is that writers generally ignore how weird the behavior of ships gravity is.  (the one exception that does come to mind is the first episode of the TV show Enterprise (the prequal Star Trek show with Scott Baccula), and all they say is that there are weird points in ships where the gravity doesn't quite work.

What would be nice is a middle ground from truly hard science fiction solutions to simulating gravity and just getting rid of the problem with a quick phrase that only power nerds care about.  A "gravity laser" for space craft.  A reasonably advanced civilization might be able to create a narrow beam of gravity that could provide a pulling force on the entire ship.  What is cool about this technology, is if this attractive force is only effective in a single direction you also have a means of reaction-less thrust, helping to minimize how much space the ship "needs" for fuel.  While this approach is still very much fictional, to me it feels a bit more grounded.

I hope you enjoyed the post and if you have any questions, feed back, thoughts, please feel free to comment.  I will try to add a drawing later tonight.