The mystery surrounding Magic Leap, a company thought to be working on some sort of advanced virtual reality or augmented reality system, has just deepened — now that legendary sci-fi author Neal Stephenson has been added to the mix.

Stephenson, best known for his groundbreaking science fiction novel Snow Crash, will join the company as Chief Futurist — a title as vague and full of promise as the company itself.

"I am the Chief Futurist of Magic Leap," wrote Stephenson on his personal website. "It is here that I am most likely to continue working on the sorts of transmedia projects that I have been interested in for many years."

In recent years, Stephenson has been involved in several startup ventures including Blue Origin, a commercial space travel company where he served as part of the technical team.

"It’s not every day that someone turns up at your house bearing a mythic sword, and so I did what anyone who has read a lot of fantasy novels would: I let them in and gave them beer," Stephenson wrote on Magic Leap's official site on Tuesday, describing how he came to be a part of the venture.

"True to form, they invited me on a quest and asked me to sign a contract (well, an NDA actually)."

Stephenson makes a direct reference to his best known novel, its focus on virtual reality and augmented reality and how these themes are connected to Magic Leap.

"When I wrote [Snow Crash], it seemed as though those technologies [VR and AR] were just around the corner," wrote Stephenson.

"In a teeming, overcrowded hardware lab in a South Florida strip mall, I got the demo from Rony, the founder and CEO. Shortly thereafter, I agreed to become Magic Leap’s Chief Futurist ... I saw something on that optical table I had never seen before — something that only Magic Leap, as far as I know, is capable of doing."

Snow Crash, the 1992 book that made Neal Stephenson a staple of the science fiction genre. Image: Flickr, Sparky

While Stephenson doesn’t directly say that the technological exploits featured in his novel are being made possible by Magic Leap, he comes pretty close. In the book, the shared virtual space is called the "Metaverse," a term used by Magic Leap in its announcement of Stephenson's hire on Twitter.

We still don't know what Magic Leap has in store (and yes, we've asked the company many times). But if futurists like Stephenson are impressed enough to sign on, it's likely that the rest of us will be pleased with the product, if not blown away.

Stephenson isn't alone in his enthusiasm for the company. Magic Leap's investors include Google, Andreessen Horowitz and film studio Legendary Entertainment.

"It feels like the right time to give … people a new medium," wrote Stephenson. "One in which three-dimensionality is a reality and not just an illusion laboriously cooked up by your brain, and in which it’s possible to get up off the couch and move — not only around your living room, but wherever on the face of the earth the story might take you."