Topology control can enhance energy efficiency and prolong network lifetime for wireless sensor networks. Several studies that attempted to solve the topology control problem focused only on topology construction or maintenance. This work designs a novel distributed and reliable energy-efficient topology control (RETC) algorithm for topology construction and maintenance in real application environments. Particularly, many intermittent links and accidents may result in packet loss. A reliable topology can ensure connectivity and energy efficiency, prolonging network lifetime. Thus, in the topology construction phase, a reliable topology is generated to increase network reachable probability. In the topology maintenance phase, this work applies a novel dynamic topology maintenance scheme to balance energy consumption using a multi-level energy threshold. This topology maintenance scheme can trigger the topology construction algorithm to build a new network topology with high reachable probability when needed. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the RETC algorithm in terms of average energy consumption and network lifetime.