David Bowie’s *Diamond Dogs* was the album originally planned around George Orwell’s *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. Bowie wanted to turn Orwell’s 1949 novel into a theatrical or musical production and began writing songs for the project in 1973.
The plan collapsed when Sonia Orwell, the author’s widow, refused permission to adapt the book. Bowie then combined the surviving Orwell-inspired material with ideas from a proposed Ziggy Stardust stage musical and an original post-apocalyptic story influenced by William S. Burroughs. The resulting hybrid became *Diamond Dogs*, released in 1974.
The album still contains unmistakable traces of the abandoned project. “1984,” “Big Brother,” and “We Are the Dead” draw on Orwellian characters, themes, and imagery, although the finished record is not a direct adaptation. Its dystopian cityscape and title track introduce Bowie’s new character, Halloween Jack, rather than simply retelling Orwell’s plot.
The other choices belong to different periods of Bowie’s career: *Low* and *Scary Monsters* are unrelated to the Orwell project, while *Outside* came decades later. *Diamond Dogs* is the accepted answer.