The Opener of the Way was published by Arkham House in 1945, in an edition of 2,065 copies — a characteristically small print run from August Derleth’s specialty press that published Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and other writers of weird fiction. The collection represents Bloch’s earliest mature work — stories written between 1935 and 1945, during his late teens and twenties, when he was in direct correspondence with Lovecraft (who became his mentor and, briefly, his fictional victim — Lovecraft gave Bloch permission to kill him off in “The Shambler from the Stars”).
The stories combine Lovecraftian cosmic horror (vast, indifferent entities beyond human comprehension) with Bloch’s emerging psychological sensibility — a talent for getting inside disturbed minds that would eventually produce Psycho. “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1943) — his most reprinted story — proposes that Jack the Ripper achieved immortality through his murders and is still alive, still killing, in modern America. It exemplifies Bloch’s mature method: taking a premise that could be merely sensational and developing it with psychological logic until the horror becomes not the premise but its implications.
Other stories — “The Seal of R’lyeh,” “The Faceless God,” “The Dark Demon” — work in the Cthulhu Mythos tradition, adding to Lovecraft’s pantheon while introducing Bloch’s characteristic humor and his interest in the psychology of cultists rather than the metaphysics of the entities they worship.
Collecting The Opener of the Way
First edition (Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1945): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $200–$600
- First edition without jacket: $40–$100
- Signed copies: $300–$800