A Brief History of Time, S. Hawking : Visual References

Every time I am confronted with a brief, I feel I look at the work of other illustrators and artists, to which they then influence/inspire my final outcome. I am trying to move away from this habit, but for the cover of 'A Brief History of Time' I am struggling to create an illustrative image that moves away from the cliché of stars, the galaxy or black holes. 

Initially I thought of making something diagrammatic - using the diagrams in the book to inspire something that both reflects the content of the book but also feels illustrative and attractive to the average person. 

David Lemm is an illustrator I often reference - he has a strong graphic style based on the concept of mapping rural and urban spaces. 

The Middle Place, David Lemm

The second artist that came to mind was Moonassi - a South Korean artist who has an ongoing project making a series of drawings that reflect his inner most feelings, thoughts and emotions. I think creating something similar could represent our human relationship with time and space, as well as our feeling/curiosity of asking these big questions posed by Hawking - could time run backwards? is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? 

Personally, as generally a more non-figurative and graphic illustrator, I would like to make something that has similar feeling and depth of concept but not so strongly based around a human character. 

Its My Fall & A Double Negative, Moonassi